Kite Flying In America - Part I

This comic mimicked an epic moment from my childhood in Detroit.  "Red & Rover" certainly put it better than I could have back in the day, but we were kindred souls.  The truly epic kite flight was the stuff of legend, and I and my friends pursued it with all the zeal an adolescent could muster.  And while our ambitions were not necessarily to fly the kite up into commercial airspace, they were - if you will pardon the pun - similarly lofty.

It was all about flying higher and farther.

We had it on good authority from some older boys in the neighborhood that there was a mystical layer of wind up somewhere between the ground and the clouds that would not only sustain your kite, but carry it many miles away once released.  Sometimes, the wind at that height would even be going in a different direction, or so we were told.  These boys were vague as to the height, as I recall.  “Twice as high as the trees” was about as specific as any of them would get, and reaching that altitude was called the Monster Flight.  Already a veteran kite flyer, I endeavored to reach that height by flying the perfect kite on the perfect day, and greatly extending my range by means of tying successive rolls of kite string together.   

Keep in mind that all prior attempts to tandem more than two rolls of string had ended in disaster.  It was 1964. 

 

I was ten years old.
 

There was a whole ritual that surrounded kite flying in my neighborhood, starting with The Build.  Boys & Girls all bought exactly the same kite available at Kresges 5 & 10 Cent Store.  It cost 79 cents, and we all got the same kind of kite because Kresges carried only the one model, and nobody else sold kites.  This turned out to be fortuitous: not only was this single model the great equalizer, but kids in the neighborhood over a generation built up a vast store of information on the  construction and flying of this model.    

The whole kit and caboodle was rolled into a tube and wrapped in plastic. The first thing you did was fish out and flatten the single sheet of paper with the instructions.  They were not instructions per se, but rather a series of pictures that showed the entire process for building your kite.  The older boy next door explained that since the kites came from Japan, and nobody there spoke English, that they had to do the instructions in pictures instead.  We all accepted this explanation because he was twelve, and thus much wiser than us.  More about him later.

The flimsy paper kite had to be carefully unrolled and flattened.  The balsa wood cross-pieces were rotated on a metal fastener that resembled an oversized paperclip until they were perpendicular to one another.  The ends of both pieces were carefully inserted into those fragile woven pockets on the four corners of the kite.  This feature in particular was fascinating to me: it seemed impossible that sewing little paper triangles onto the four corners of a paper template could possibly be strong enough to support a wooden frame, but it was.  Next you had to attach a string to the horizontal member and pull it tight so as to create the curve that tightened the paper skin of the kite against the frame.  After that, you made a pinprick hole about one third down from the top corner, fed your kite string through, and tied it to the frame. 

It sounds straightforward, but it was not.  The whole process was fraught with peril, and you had to know all the tricks not only to keep from destroying your kite, but to ensure that it would fly.  For example: I and my friends punched our hole and tied the kite string off where the two members crossed (per the instructions) until our neighborhood’s version of  Fonzie - a guy we called Sonny Boy – revealed that the best place to tie off was about one inch below the cross.  One test flight proved him to be right.  The kite got higher faster, and made much better use of the wind.  This revelation would prove to be essential in my later efforts to conclude the Monster Flight.

It didn’t end there.  We learned that it was important to adjust the cross-members on the little metal clip that held them together to ensure that they lined up exactly with the horizontal and vertical axes of the paper kite, and that you never punched the hole to feed the kite string through until after you bowed the cross piece that tightened the kite against the frame.  Otherwise, you could tear your kite before you even got off the ground.  I remember that one friend’s Dad figured to reinforce the hole with scotch tape.  We all agreed that his solution was bogus, and he was not to be trusted; and who exactly invited a Dad to be part of this process anyway? 

 

Coming up: Part II - The Tale Of The Tail

Obama To The Middle Class - Part II

So, in the last post, OffHisMeds provided an example of an Obamacare policy for a family of four which - including subsidies - was certain to reduce them to abject poverty whilst simultaneously flooding the insurance companies and the health care cartels with Trillions in additional booty. 

But, what, I thought, would the rates be if that couple had no children?  Take those same two people making $64,000, subtract their kids, and guess what the policy would cost?  If you guessed exactly the same, you were right.

This is the interesting part: they tweaked the subsidies so that both families would end up paying almost exactly the same overpriced premiums.  Now, there is no doubt that the whole notion of a bunch of clueless bureaucrats looking into their crystal ball and determining what market pricing ought to be is nonsense on its face, but this example shows that Democrats are heartless bastards as well.  As Progressives, wouldn't they insist that the Couple with no children pay more so that the family of four could pay less, and thus not be bankrupted?

Apparently not.

Mind you, I don't agree that a childless couple should pay more so that somebody else can pay less.  That insanity never has the desired result, and the only thing that does happen is that Democrats have yet more booty they can spread around to their cronies.  Still, what is interesting is how relentlessly regressive Obamacare's pricing policies are.  This is the antithesis of everything the Democrat Party supposedly stands for.

So in conclusion, we now have proof positive from www.healthcare.gov that Democrats are heartless bastards.

As if we didn't already know.

Obama To The Middle Class - Lube Is Extra

First came the revelation in the newspaper today that the "penalty" for not enrolling in Obamacare can be vastly higher than the 2.5% that had been widely reported last fall.  Per this article and a calculator invented by the uber-Liberal Brookings Institute, the penalty for not buying a policy through Obama's exchanges can be upwards of 5% of AGI (Adjusted Gross Income).

Don't take my word for it: Click the links, read 'em and weep. The hits just keep on coming.

But wait, it gets worse.  OffHisMeds hadn't visited www.healthcare.gov in a few weeks, so I popped onto the site to see what fresh horrors awaited.  It didn't take long to find them.  I used one of my baseline examples from prior calculations, a family of four with a modest AGI of $64,000.  That's two parents humping it full time on average salaries of $32,000 each, WAY the Hell below the median individual wage of $47,000, which is to say, barely getting by.

There you go, people: from Obama's website to your eyes: a yearly premium of $443.00/mo. ($5,316.00 per year) for the crappiest Silver Plan available, and you are on the hook for the first $12,700 out of pocket.  Oh yeah, and that doesn't include Dental or anything more than bare bones optical, so throw in another $2,000.00 per year for the median coverage on those two items.  That means this family of modest means will pay upwards of $20,000.00 - 50% of their disposable income - before the insurance cartels have to cough up a dime of coverage.

But wait, surely taxpayers subsidies will cover some of this cost!  Yes, Obamacare to the rescue!  As the website states above, this family qualifies for a generous $249.00 per month subsidy, but look at the fine print: That subsidy is already deducted from a premium which would otherwise cost $692.00 per month.  Obama giveth, and Obama taketh away.

But wait, it gets better!  None of these plans offer you any assurance whatsoever that you'll get to keep your doctors or other preferred health care providers.  In fact, there is less than a one in four chance that your doctors will be on any plan you choose, and it is a virtual certainty that if you shop plans that include just your doctors, they will be the higher priced plans.  Even that weasel Obama is now tacitly admitting this.

Obamacare does what nobody thought was possible: it sanctifies the ridiculously high prices of health care services and completely protects them against market forces, ensuring that they will never come down.  That $45.00 Tylenol at the hospital, or that $10,000 two hour emergency room bill?  They are never going away.

As OffHisMeds has demonstrated time and time and time again, the Affordable Health Care Act is a scheme to rape working Americans, confiscate all of their money, and give it to the insurance companies and the health care Cartels.  How many more examples do people need to see before they believe it?

Obamacare advocates are either Morons, or evil, but they are most assuredly one of these. 

Deja Vu

Regarding "U.S. will give up role on Internet domain names" (Saturday Nation) this is not the first time the U.S. has been confronted with the prospect of surrendering control of something of great use to civilization.  Those over 50 will recall that in 1977 Jimmy Carter negotiated for the surrender of the Panama Canal, even though it was built by the U.S. in 1914 and had been operated successfully and fairly by us for over 60 years.  Twenty three years later, Communist China took control.  Since then, China's influence in the Central and South America has increased exponentially, and almost exclusively at the expense of the United States.  For but one example, last year, a bill was introduced in the Panamanian legislature mandating instruction in Mandarin Chinese. 

 

There are many similarities between 1977 and today.  Like President Carter, President Obama's foreign policy has been relentlessly conciliatory: Both advocated for and pursued a greatly diminished US military; Both made numerous unilateral concessions to Russia and to Islamists.  The consequences of those policies were the same, resulting in expansionist regimes in Russia and the Middle East, and the outbreak of war.  Not coincidentally, the policies of both presidents also resulted in the increasing isolation of two of the most successful democracies on the planet: Taiwan and Israel.

 

As with the Panama Canal, the consequence of surrendering the Internet to foreigners will not be felt immediately, but it will almost certainly benefit countries and forces hostile to democracy and freedom, all brought about by the feckless foreign policies of presidents committed to appeasement.

 

Pete Smith

Cypress, TX

School Project

So, Little Sister messaged me on Facebook to let me know that our Grandniece Emma had a school project that involved her sending a notebook out into the world, to be passed from one relative or friend to another until it was full, and then returned to Emma.  Big responsibility. 

The objective was for each participant to provide a short biography about themselves, their family and  where they lived.  A passel of adults of her acquaintance in other states would have to keep the string going and see it through.  A little girl's extra credit hung in the balance.

Anyway, it arrived today from Cali, with biographies from Emma's cousins (Detroit), Great Aunt Jane - my Little Sister (Cali) and her daughters Laura (Cali) and Katie (New York).  Now it was my turn (Texas), and with luck it would be passed again and again, with a happy outcome for our Emma.  Anyway, I knocked out a first draft and sent it to my sister to review.  Still waiting for her response.  
 
Hi, my name is Pete, and I am Emma's Great Uncle.  I moved to Texas from Detroit in 1985.  When I got here, the first thing I read was a bumper sticker that said "will the last person leaving Michigan please turn out the lights".  Turns out a lot of us Michiganders were moving to Texas back then, and boy, for a while there they were pissed!  Last year, they finally took the probationary sticker off my driver's license, and I am now a full fledged Texan.  I am looking forward to the opportunity to vote for the first time in my adopted state, but I am bitter.  If I had just snuck across the border from Mexico, I could have voted right away, and also qualified for discounts on margaritas every Cinco de Mayo. 
 
When I got here, I was curious as to why there were so many Democrats in Michigan, and relatively few in Texas.  Turns out it's because most of the Republicans left Michigan, while the Democrats all stayed because they are not big on travelling.  In Houston there are a fair number of Democrats, and I have noticed that none of them like manual labor.  I have yet to meet a Democrat who cuts their own grass, for example.  Instead, they have Illegal Immigrants do it and pay them $3 per hour.  Man, Democrats sure do like servants.  They use Illegals for child care, lawn care, home care, hair care, car care and pet care.  Say what you will, but back in Michigan the Democrats would at least break a sweat.
 
When I left Detroit in 1985, it caused quite an uproar, coming as it did so soon after the shame I brought upon the family in 1977 by moving out of the house into an apartment before I was married.  Unbeknownst to me this was scandalous behavior that caused my grandparents, aunts and uncles much consternation, except for Grandma Smith, who spent her adult life playing piano and serving drinks in Speakeasies.  She declared that "Peter could damn well live on his own if he wanted to, and I said three fingers of whiskey Joanie, not two."  It only occurred to me later that when I moved out, Granny Smith got my room.  And even though I was the Black Sheep of the family, I was still spoiled when I came home to visit.
 
Our extended family is very culturally and ethnically diverse.  My Brother Tom married a purebred Italian girl named Marilyn Ancona, Sister Sue married a purebred Polish lad named John Malkowski, and Little Sister Jane married a purebred German boy named Mark Seidl.  Our Dad immediately nicknamed them "the Dago, the Polack and the Kraut", which would cause Mom to roll her eyes and say "Oh Thomas!"  My brother and sisters all got married shortly after graduating from high school, and they and their spouses got busy.  Soon we were awash in fourth generation crumb snatchers, which Grandma Smith used to shoo away from her feet with the back of her hands.....

Anyway, that's as far as I got, and I am now awaiting Little Sisters critique.  Stay tuned....

LTE: Bad Behavior

The only thing less surprising than Democrats demonizing Darrell Issa over his alleged mistreatment of Rep. Elijah Cummings during the IRS hearings was the media's handling of the matter.

While I wait with bated breath for Democrats to do something other than accuse Republicans of misdeeds, it is the media's treatment of this story that is the real outrage: The Democrat narrative is accepted as fact, including the oft-repeated lie that Issa has deprived Democrats of the opportunity to speak and abused the legislative process. Also lacking from this story is anything to do with Cummings' bad behavior, a perfect storm of rudeness, defamation and demagoguery against Republicans, as he pursues his own stated intention of obstructing the hearings over IRS abuses of tea party groups.

Pete Smith, Cypress

http://www.chron.com/default/article/Talking-revenue-and-politics-5298537.php
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Original Letter:

Regarding "Issa hands Democrats weapon to use against him" (Friday Nation), the only thing less surprising than Democrats demonizing Darrell Issa over his alleged mistreatment of Rep Elijah Cummings during the IRS hearings was the Media's handling of the matter. 

 

While I wait with bated breath for Democrats to do something other than accuse Republicans of misdeeds, it is the Media's treatment of this story that is the real outrage: The Democrat narrative is accepted as fact, including the oft-repeated lie that Issa has deprived Democrats of the opportunity to speak and abused the legislative process.  Also lacking from this story is anything to do with Cummings' bad behavior, a perfect storm of rudeness, defamation and demagoguery against Republicans, as he pursues his own stated intention of obstructing the hearings over IRS abuses of Tea Party groups.

 

If a Republican even once acted the way Cummings does at virtually every hearing, they would be abandoned by their leaders and excluded from polite society, and rightfully so.  But because Cummings is black and a Democrat, not only does he get a Hall Pass for his reprehensible behavior, he is actually held in esteem for it, and portrayed as the victim.

 

Ten months ago President Obama declared the IRS's behavior "contrary to our traditions" and that "people have to be held accountable."  If the Media subjected Cummings to the same scrutiny they do Issa, perhaps the hearings could move forward, and the President's words would have meaning. 

 

Pete Smith

Cypress, TX

Out Of Control Firefighters

Regarding "Firefighters deal includes raise" (Tuesday Front Page), coming on the heels of the revelation that Houston Fire Department retirees were walking away with six figure payouts for unused days off, I guess we should have seen this overtime "compromise" coming.  Rather than rein in the overtime perks in the HFD contract that threatened to bust the budget and cut services, Mayor Parker decided to throw more money at it.  In return for their promise not to further exploit the OT privileges in the current contract, she gave all firefighters a two percent raise and a cash payment of $975 that was euphemistically referred to as a "uniform allowance". 

 

Only a public sector union negotiation could propose to fix a projected $8.5 million overtime cost over-run with payouts that will cost the City $9.3 Million in the next year, and an extra $5.5 million for every full year after that. The only thing funnier than the payoff is the tortured language used by both sides to portray this concession as some kind of "good faith" compromise, and the only thing funnier than that is the creation of yet another in the seemingly endless categories of public employee pay, where a nuisance payoff is called a uniform allowance. 

 

On the HFD website under their mission statement, the fire department lists the following goals*:

 

Be Nice (Improve Customer Service)
• Strengthen and reinforce a positive public perception of the department
• Embrace Diversity
• Fairness

 

Exploiting crazy OT policies to inflate your pay is not nice, does nothing to reinforce a positive perception of the department, and is the exact opposite of fair.

 

But that's just another day in the public sector.

 

Pete Smith

Cypress, TX

 

* http://www.houstontx.gov/fire/abouthfd/index

Why Do Newspapers Have Opinions?

It's nearly Spring, and in the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of: voting in the Primaries.  And so do mine. 

Which brings me to my eternal question come election season: why do newspaper editorial boards try to tell me who to vote for?  Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the effort.  Come the primaries, the Chronicle editors expend considerable time and effort to recommend a slate of candidates right down the ballot to include the most modest of elected positions.  Then come the regular elections, they will repeat that process.

Television stations don't do this, nor does radio or for that matter the most opinionated of Talking Heads, regardless of medium.  Heck, most of our politicians don't dare to offer a complete slate of candidates to their constituents, partially because of a lack of bandwidth, but mostly because of their rightful fear of appearing to be presumptuous.  Newspapers, uniquely, have no such compunction, and consequently, an opinion on everything.

I wonder if newspapers worry about the appearance of impropriety, especially considering the historic alignment of most with the Democratic Party.  I'm tempted to say no considering the number of stories the most papers run where conservative politicians are fair game solely because they are, well, conservative, whilst Dem pols generally get a Hall Pass.  But on the other hand, no other medium goes to such lengths to structure their content such that hard news, opinion and entertainment are completely segregated.

It's a puzzle.

My personal opinion is that the practice of newspapers offering opinions thrives because it is a centuries-old tradition, which introduces another irony: ask any newspaperman if corporations are "like people", and thus entitled to things like opinions, and you will peg the red line on the scorn-o-meter.  And yet, here we have newspapers - virtually all corporations - who gather unto themselves this privilege as if bestowed by a higher power and immutable for the same reason, the agnostic tendencies of most newspaper editors notwithstanding.

That said, this year, instead of just complaining about the anonymously opinionated ways of newspaper editors, I have a suggestion: Keep those opinions coming, but instead of addressing your readers in the imperial Third Person, as in, "The Chronicle suggests", let every opinion piece have a byline – with multiple entries if necessary.  In a day and age when politicians are required to state "I'm Joe Blow, and I approve this message", where business and advocacy groups are required to reveal their every attempt to influence public opinion, and when Tea Party groups are forced to swear to the political neutrality of family members and friends just to escape the eternal scrutiny of the IRS, it only seems right that the people tasked with giving us the facts and nothing but should be forced to live by the same rules.

Nixon went to China; Gorbachev enacted Perestroika; Clinton dissed Sister Souljah.  My point is, all went against an archetype for the greater public good.  Such a thing must be done by a former true believer in order for it to take.  Somebody in the print community must lead the way: it might as well be my hometown newspaper. 

Pete Smith
Cypress, TX

A Real Space Mission

Regarding "America needs a plan for space exploration" (Friday Outlook), I very much enjoyed Doug Cooke's article and his vision for reviving America’s space program.  Unfortunately his plan, like all others, is compromised by the lack of commitment to long term funding and the ever-changing vision of successive presidents.  Case in point, since the era of the Apollo moon landings, the direction of our space program has been substantially changed at least three times, most recently with President Obama’s decision to abandon the Bush plan of a return to the moon.  Likewise, funding has dwindled in the past 40 years.  NASA is the only department of government to shrink since the 60s, much less by 50%.

To move forward with a vigorous space program, what is needed is a mission that is consistently funded, and immune to political partisanship or differing visions of what America's role in space ought to be.  There is only one mission that meets these criteria, and that is Planetary Defense.  Humankind has no greater priority than survival, and yet we have done next to nothing to protect ourselves from collisions with meteors and comets.  The evidence that such things happen is all around us:

 

-       Two weeks ago, a comet estimated at 1,500 feet long flew within 2 million miles of our planet, a literal hair's width away, and we had no knowledge that it even existed until a week beforehand.  A meteor that size could devastate a continent and create a crater 2 miles wide.

 

-       A year ago, a small asteroid only 65 feet in diameter struck over Russia, injuring hundreds.  The explosion was the equivalent of a modern nuclear bomb, and if it had hit directly over a major city, it would have caused mass casualties.

 

-       In 1994, upwards of twenty comet fragments – some as large as one mile in diameter - struck the planet Jupiter.  A similar impact with the Earth likely would have resulted in the extinction of mankind.

 

There have been several other similar events in the modern era, including the 1908 Tunguska explosion in Siberia that destroyed hundreds of square miles of forest.  It was estimated to be a mere 200 feet in diameter, yet with a destructive power 1,000 times greater than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima during World War II.

 

The advantages of Planetary Defense as the core of our space efforts are numerous and compelling:

 

-       The practicality of the program makes it a no-brainer: We either do it or risk mass death and possible extinction. 

 

-       It’s cheap: For the first decade, less than $15 per citizen of planet Earth per year.

 

-        Humankind will require a presence in space for as long as we occupy this planet, so funding will be consistent.

 

-       The infrastructure built to support a Planetary Defense program could be used to leverage exploration and colonization of our solar system for a fraction of what standalone missions would cost. 

 

-       Economies of scale would make space tourism a profitable reality, and help pay for the program.

 

-       We have a ready-made workforce for the manufacture, deployment and support of such an effort: hundreds of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans already have the training and understanding of the technologies, organizational structure and  communications necessary to make the effort work.  Those same skills and mental toughness would also provide a huge pool of candidates to survive the very rigorous life of a much expanded  astronaut corp.  Another huge benefit is the ability to deploy disabled vets, particularly those who have lost limbs: not only would they survive in space, they would thrive.

 

-       It provides a practical use for America's arsenal of 5,000 nuclear weapons.  A single comet or asteroid might require scores of nukes to either destroy it or deflect its course.  The use of nukes to prevent a collision is actually favored by the Obama administration, and is the only available technology to deploy for many decades to come.

 

The program could be put in play for $100 Billion per year - a six fold increase in NASA's current budget.  That would be enough to pay not only for a couple of manned deep space platforms, but the transportation infrastructure to support them, a network of satellites to detect foreign bodies, and the launchers necessary to deal with any that threaten the Earth.

 

That represents a mere 15% of our military budget, or 5% of current entitlement spending.  We could fund the entire program simply by eliminating a small percentage of the waste and fraud in these programs, and a revived manufacturing sector based on space technology would do wonders for America's economy as well as reducing the need for an ever-expanding welfare state.  Another option is a $100 Billion reduction in the military spending we do to protect Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, which currently costs us over a quarter trillion dollars.

 

If there is not a quick international consensus, America should start out doing this alone.  Otherwise, the bureaucrats will bog it down, and we will end up with another compromise boondoggle like the International Space Station: a noble idea that so far has cost over $150 billion, but accomplished little.  In fact, with the implementation of a Planetary Defense initiative, the ISS could be the platform to launch the effort, and be viable for generations. 

 

Bottom line, virtually every venture into space could then not only be sustained, but improved upon.  Every technology relating to space - including propulsion, habitats, communications and navigation - would be developed to allow us to seriously consider colonizing the solar system.

 

We are destined to be a space-faring people but that will never happen until we sustain our investment and have a foundational venture.  It's well past time to not only protect our species and all life on Earth, but to move beyond its confines.  Investing in our survival is the logical first step.

 

Pete Smith

Cypress, TX