Fiscal Cliff Zombies Walk the Green Mile

President Obama fresh from a 'We didn't build that' comment on a drone Iran captured (or built themselves) had time to comment on the Republican Existential Greed Party plan to fairly extend and enhance tax cuts for the wealthy in order to help concentrate wealth and let jobs trickle down to China, India and Mexico while accelerating global warming greenhouse gassing in effect  said of the Republoft plan, 'Drop dead'.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323501404578161162667441912.html

Speaker Boehner in the avant guard wing of the Republican Party entertaining ideas of letting millions of Mexican workers flood the nation to help create jobs for Mexicans and votes for Republicans-Republican strategists are sure that poor Mexicans will be grateful to Republicans for letting them in and will vote to concentrate wealth for millionaires and billionaires) said in effect 'Drop Dead' to the President's plan for avoiding the fiscal cliff by letting the rich pay Clinton era tax rates.

The default plan to let the dread Clinton era tax rates return seems nearly unavoidable now as the respective plans appear to be dead men walking. We find this rather interesting. As the only political party in history to have used a nuclear weapon in war, the Democrat Party is not reluctant to go off the deep end.

 image credit White House.gov

China Increases CO2 Pollution to More Than 10 Billion Tons Annually-World Output Up 3.1

An article published Sunday in Nature Climate Change reports planetary CO2 emissions increased 2.6% in 2012 with China being the greatest polluter increasing its emissions to more than 10 billion tons while the U.S.A reduced its emissions yet is still second in rank at 5.9 billion tons. The trend of other countries such as China and Russia to increase their CO2 output along with the developing world presents a gloomy scenario for controlling global climate change and temperature increases. Scientists expect that the higher range of temperature increase scenarios will develop rather than the moderate.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/02/us-climate-emissions-idUSBRE8B10AT20121202

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/index.html

Inn 2011 global carbon dioxide releases increased by 3.1%. Without strident and ecospherically correct U.S. economic leadership toward low-entropy, low carbon production methodical transformation of production infrastructure the Lovelock prophecy of planetary population crash with desertification by emerge one day in the distant future a hundred years or two.

Atheist Acts Against Christians & A Clarification of Relevant Civil Rights Act Elements in Set Theory

A Pennsylvania restaurant named Prudhomme's Lost Cajun Kitchen provided a 10% menu discount to Christians bring in a Church bulletin on Sundays. It's a reasonably way to attract business yet charges were filed by the state after a complaint from an atheist. Recently the decision was found in favor of the complainant.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/10/john-wolff-lost-cajun-kitchen-discount-churchgoers_n_1661439.html

Following is my opinion about such terms of the civil rights act precluding discrimination.

The issue is simple and can be expressed in set theory terms;

.The Civil right's acts enumerated elements that one may not use as a basis for discrimination (such as discrimination race, color, religion, or national origin) can be regard for-themselves as Universals A, B, C & D. One may not form a set using A, B, C or D as the basis for discrimination positively or negatively. That is, one cannot exclude Christian or others of faith, require them to sit at the back of the bus while non-Christians ride up front an so forth.

The set of elements one uses for offering specials on goods and services may include A, B, C, and D yet not exclude any. If one offers special rates to A, B, C, or D it need must be free to all members of the set. Probably A, B,C, & D must remain universals for themselves in any particular set and cannot be reduced to particulars of the universals A, B, C, or D.

It's alright to form a set to provide special access to goods and services if that set does not include the Universals A, B, C or D in it as test condition disjunctives.

The court probably failed to clarify what valid elements are that can be used to form a set for special business benefits and that didn't help at all, and may have fired up some godless atheists to expand their anti-Christian acts.

The restaurant owner could offer a 20% discount to anyone bringing in a bulletin from a Sunday meeting perhaps, as any organization can meet on a Sunday without violating the Set C.R.A. The restaurant owner probably would like the business of N.A.S.C.A.R. Sunday patrons with a program that showed they attended yet of course he might dispute that they were members of an organization.

If the civil rights act was the basis for a court discrimination against a restaurateur's 10% discount to those with Church bulletins it indicates the court's failure to clarify the range of applicability of relevant civil rights law. Those willing to attract business with sales discounts need plain criteria that will help bring in the maximum number of diners.

If the restaurant had offered a 10% discount to any organizational meeting on Sunday with a bulletin bearing the appropriate date it would have been plain discrimination on the basis of religion to exclude churches. One should be free to offer once-a-week discounts anytime including Sunday.

It was a remarkable change in the constitution of the U.S. body politick when a Sunday discount on veal cutlets, mash potatoes and gravy was prohibited while after abolition Sunday liquor sales blue laws. Atheists can booze and choose what football games to watch Sunday without worrying about paying more for Buffalo wings than Christians.

The intent of the law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of religion was perhaps written to ensure that Catholics, Jews, Protestants, Christian Scientists, Mormons and whatnot would not use sectarianism for housing and job discrimination. It can be wrongly applied when too broadly extended such that it prohibits religious organizations from enjoying equal opportunity with other organizations to receive benefits of a general non-religious based class discount. If private schools can receive research grants then so ought Christian schools.

Some atheists might yet be aghast at the concept that anyone should provide discounts to organizations meeting 'to better the spiritual well-being of mankind'' on Sundays. It might be that atheists feel they contribute nothing to better the human spirit and feel excluded on a religious basis with atheism on the dark side of the spiritual force. Plainly the language used in offering restaurant discounts must constructed carefully in an appetizing way.

Melt from Greenland & Antarctica Increases World Sea Level .95 mm Annually

Scientists found that Greenland and Antarctica's ice sheets are melting (Greenland at a faster pace) and contributing to the rise in sea level. The rate of increase has risen several hundred percent since 1992. There should be a carbon tax and passage of tax credits for alternative energy.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/news/grace20121129.html

Long ago Canada's Banks Island had foot-thick trees growing on it according to petrified wood discoveries. It appears that fossil fuels and cars are driving the world further in that direction with mid-west drought along the way.

The Obama administration will spend another 120 million on cheaper electric battery development though that hasn't worked before when the government spent 2 billion. Passing tax credit legislation for a decade might be a better way to go.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=us-launches-new-project-to-develop

Obamacare Will Inflate Public Cost of AIDS by Trillions

With medical costs at 400,000 dollars per AIDS patient over a lifetime the homosexual lifestyle bites hard on public budgeting. Obamacare's 'compassionate liberalism' approach to medicine will cost the public trillions unnecessarily at that cost will transfer wealth from the middle class to the powers of concentrated wealth. It would be far less costly to simply expand the V.A. hospital system to include the poor. AIDS patients could be given free AIDS drugs and medical treatment without transferring that cost to private insurers who in turn transfer the cost to the public paying taxes.

The C.D.C. presently estimates the number of people with AIDS in the U.S.A. at about one million and one hundred fifty thousand. That number multiplied by 400,000 dollars is about a half a trillion bucks, and of course there are another 12,000 individuals contracting the disease each new year. It gets to be real money.
Some public illnesses such as HIV are too epidemic and lasting to treat as usual medical phenomena financially. Transferring coverage for AIDS to insurers by force of law as a pre-existing condition probably will cost trillions when generic drugs and government incentives to provide low cost AIDS treatment to pharmaceutical companies could drive the cost way down-and should.

http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/basic.htm

U.S. veterans already have a vast and epidemic number of head injuries and P.T.S.D. psych treatments as well as Gulf War disease and a host of other problems that could use a better V.A. hospital system and of course a substantial public hospital system would be a good way to treat large numbers of biological or radiological casualties some day if that ever occurs. It is better to be prepared and with a balanced budget than to be on vacation when disaster strikes.

Another D.O.D. Spending Reform Scenario

The President as the executive chooses to order troops here or there for 90 days (War Powers Act) before requiring Congressional approval (if they actually took their responsibility seriously) and the Department of Defense deploys them.

The D.O.D. should train the Army and Marines to fight a large conventional war (with the new unconventional, emergent weapons systems included) instead of anti-terrorist cell operations. Anti-terrorism wars tasking should fall to S.F. Black Ops in the 50,000 man rapid deployment S.F. BOP for efficiency. A conventional Army or Marines is rather a large target for-itself and attacked as a sitting duck in financially assymetric warfare thereby harming the United States with great cost effectiveness.

Obviously with American reliance on foreign fossil fuels the Bin Ladens of the world have ample spare change to finance terrorist ops now and then to which the states leadership responds with speeches and multi-trillion dollar troop deployments that are as effective as a snowball in hell at making permanent social transformations stop nurturing  terrorism.

The United States cannot become a colonial power enacting the mistakes of the past especially as a temporal occupier. That direction is an egregious historical error and ought to be avoided. The military is no substitute for intelligent civil economic leadership and a good society that others want to emulate. A blunt instrument does not raise I.Q. even if it obliterates some opposition.

Much effort to transform society for the good should be found in global ecospheric restoration concurrent with full employment and enhanced well-being of all American citizens.

Anti-safe haven interdiction efforts can be accomplished with surveillance droids on ground and air with some being as small as a mosquito along with aerial weapons delivery packages. If the governments themselves are corrupt the U.S. cannot simply send a conventional military to do nation makeovers and it ought not conduct aggressive war upon governments it does not regard as 'democratic' because they don't want to have a Wal-Mart society.

Contemporary U.S. politics are largely designed to concentrate wealth with real support from both parties and the is media owned by the rich even if they own both the left and the right broadcasters. The displacing political power of the media means that thousands of individuals never rise to run by acclaim from local radio podcast-broadcasters reaching consensus. That situation presents not even a semblance of democratic, popular nomination or selection of qualified citizens in the Presidential campaigns.

'Lots of Money' can be spent very quickly by the congress and war excuses for dubiously necessary contests are a modern leverage tool for redistribution of wealth to the rich from all taxpayers. Eisenhower warned in his Farewell Address about the 'military-industrial complex'. The economist Lester Thurow described the military-industrial 'maintennance economy' pattern in a (1999?) book-The G.W. Bush administration embodied that non-creative political modus vivendi.

 A profligacy in spending and perennial foreign wars have defeated more than one civilization or nation. Incompetent and corrupt national leadership that fails to develop its economy in an ecospherically useful way as well as its social environment moves toward being an obstruction to democracy, human survival on Earth and Toynbean fin de sicle status.

One wants to have constructive civil rather than military engagement with adverse foreign powers, lend support to regimes experiencing subversive  anti-freedom rebellion movements and develop an excellent and consolidated intelligence gathering capability that would locate actual terrorist dangers to the security of then people of the United States in addition to the problem of egregious deficit spending.

Altruism doesn't require payment-that's why its altruism. Those fighting for their own interests (themselves, profit motive, family, global powers of concentrated wealth, NPR etc) should be paid moderately in a Democratic society. Their pay should be consistent with the best interests of the society. I met a medal of honor winner from EL Campo Texas that was a Green Beret that didn't get paid a lot ('Sgt. Benevidez had a glorious day'). He returned his medal to the Congress because of the way they treat the poor. The late Sgt. Benevidez was a humble auto mechanic-small business auto garage owner.

One cannot purchase freedom from hostile foreign or domestic powers without in effect paying tribute to the victors. A people that requires military substitutes for themselves is one in decline. In the Spanish American war there were far too many volunteers to accept into the Army. In the Vietnam war the Army volunteers that enlisted inn the 1950s fought very well until discharge about 1966 and at low cost. The draft Army didn't do too badly either considering and they weren't paid much either. Before the Bush administration a private e-1 might get just a few hundred dollars a month-and that's an acceptable cost for the nation to shoulder on a longer-term basis.

A permanent high cost military where a 'combat' soldier e-1 on some sort of foreign occupation is paid about 24,000 annually isn't reasonably sustainable. It creates a culture of paying off a mercenary militia that is economically devastating.

My father was a four year world war two veteran that wasn't paid much like the other 20 million Americans that served in uniform from a national population of what-about 140 million? Military training before the end of the cold war in December 1990 when President Gorbachev withdrew 250,000 troops from East Germany during the Reagan years had pay still quite low. Reagan developed a potential military power rather than exploiting that power in protracted-ill-thought out and ineffective military contests of less than total war. That is still not a bad idea. One should put a firewall between special forces (S.F. BOP) rapid response units and escalation by the conventional military by separating the S.F. BOP into its own force. The conventional special forces such as the Seals and Rangers would remain as they are.

The planetary anti-terrorism war so far as the United States goes should be met by the intelligence community and specialized rather than conventional forces.

Congressional Vertigo at the Fiscal Cliff

Because it's there the U.S. government hasn't so far found a way to ford the fiscal cliff regardless of presentation as a vertical or horizontal challenge. A cliff viewed from below is a wall to climb while viewed from above it's the mouse in the elephant's tent. When the nation was on the way up it overcome challenges, and while a decadent establishment is on the top (establishments implicitly become supremist) it is paralyzed with fear of budget cutting vertigo.

The military cost in a personnel pay bloated era is a good example. It could easily use a 25% budget reduction and become more efficient. Since L.B.J. and Brown and Root developed a cozy relationship Texas and military contractors have profited from protracted, expensive foreign wars. In times past though the soldiers weren't paid much unlike today.

The Department of Defense should not deploy the Army or Marines to bizarre locales with dubious national interests. They should be reduced in size and train to fight one large conventional war against China in a decade or two, as they are the realistically single substantial possible general war foe. The United States cannot afford to splurge on a bloated military budget now when it isn't necessary and be broke and incapable of fighting in the future when it may be necessary.

Money diverted from development of the U.S. economy and scientific research to pay for an overpaid military and legions of military contractors weakens the United States in its global economic competition and status. Since so many of the establishment (implicitly supremist) have deemed the United States to be a declining economic power comparatively they seem unconcerned about wasting tax dollars on a presently badly deployed military instead of developing the U.S. economy toward a new era of global high efficiency, advanced tech ecospheric syntegrity with liberty and justice for all citizens.

The Marines should be reduced in size by 25%, as should the Army. The Air Force research budget should increase and the Navy should develop a next generation of ships able to survive the plethora of drone mach assault platforms below and above the surface. A new corps of special force fighters numbering 50,000 should be created as a rapid deployment force able to work anywhere globally needed very swiftly to relieve the oppressed such as they are until a U.N., African, Asian or other interim occupation force arrives for sedentary security.

The vertigo of the budget cutters at cutters seems to preclude the reorganization of anything so that it would increase efficiency. Soldiers can receive lower pay as they used to yet they deserve far better veterans health and hiring services after service. Obamacare should have expanded the V.A. hospital system and included all veterans as well as the poor of the nation for free, quality reliable service.

The poor have 50 state bureaucracies to go through for 'insurance' as they travel around the nation seeking work to deny they are have a domicile in Fargo, Houston or Anchorage where they might seasonally look for a job. Establishments are implicitly supremist and badly serve veterans not uncommonly after their active useful value date stamp term of service has expired.

Proportional tax incentives should be created to employers to hire those without a job for the greatest length of time. Keeping people working and off relief will be necessary in the new economic era ahead. Keeping soldier out of protracted unnecessary troop deployments such as Afghanistan and Iraq will reduce public medical costs for generations as well as public payments to military contractors for luxury deserts and foods in restaurants former palaces of dictators. A little good intelligence is a leavening needed in political leadership to use a military effectively. Quality C.I.A. field operatives are one method of learning of terrorist planners from madrassas to laboratories. Like the chess pieces on a board politicians have the choice to use knights to play a good game or for cracking nuts.

The chiaroscuro political landscape of the nation in a twilight era of alleged decline suffused with a thousand points of starlight and more receding to the beginning of light in the Universe presents the paradox of sweet and sour pork politics, unused rice dishes of invention and hopes for a new ecospheric renewal economic foundation with low entropy, conservation of endangered species, wild habitat and full employment without global warming.

Plainly the Congress is not up to the challenge of fording the fiscal cliff or of finding a way to overcome their own contentedness in material wealth and comfort, security and power. Legislating more of the same fiduciary input with clever legalistic tricks is the congressionally preferred method even if that way leads to more national comparative decline as if taking a stroll on moss covered boulders in rain and cold wind downhill was less difficult.

The uncompetitive broadcast media has saturated the nation with fantasy politics and fantasy economic reality. Chess at chess.com is competitive-the broadcast media is not. Like the Congress it is used to being a silly elite lecturing the public who are not peers of power in any way. That conditioning by the media is permitted by the congress that could reform it if they could reform anything positively and as during the Clinton era it just keeps getting dumber and dumber with concentrated wealth.

A nation or civilization on the rise finds new ways to overcome challenges that a contented society at the top does not. They may be concerned with standing tall and looking good while they crumble as social cookies baked by hostesses of the legendary past of which the recipe is lost. Tomorrow's economic leadership twits can bring a new message to the masses that a ford beyond the terrible cliff at the edge of the world has been found. Those visionaries work simply in faith to transcend the temporal challenges by ignoring them and hoping they go away, they work tirelessly to overcome the perennially emerging establishment of new supremacies in opposition to a healthy, recovering ecosphere, full employment and freedom of religion trusting that God will bring the end game on his own schedule. It is the role of the Congress to find ways to generate a balanced budget and full employment without public debt while the citizens wait on God and take care of the planet that is his footstool, as it were.