johnd83
johnd83's JournalThe Paul Ryan budget does NOT leave current seniors unscathed
I have not studied the Ryan budget in detail, however they were trying to spin it that current seniors would not be affected by the cuts because the Medicare changes would affect younger people. The cuts to medicaid are different and would start immediately. What nobody seems to talk about is that most of the medicaid money (or at least large portion of it) goes to paying for nursing home care for seniors. This is not covered under Medicaid. This means that if Ryan and the GOP are elected with big enough majorities, nursing home care would disappear overnight. The GOP actually won in 2010 by claiming that Obama was going to cut senior health care funding. I see an Obama campaign commercial coming...
There may be cuts to current SS beneficiaries too but I am not sure.
Google's Self-Driving Cars: 300,000 Miles Logged, Not a Single Accident Under Computer Control
Ever since Google began designing its self-driving cars, they've wanted to build cars that go beyond the capabilities of human-piloted vehicles, cars that are much, much safer. When Sebastian Thrun announced the project in 2010, he wrote, "According to the World Health Organization, more than 1.2 million lives are lost every year in road traffic accidents. We believe our technology has the potential to cut that number, perhaps by as much as half."
New data indicate that Google's on the right path. Earlier this week the company announced that the self-driving cars have now logged some 300,000 miles and "there hasn't been a single accident under computer control."
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/08/googles-self-driving-cars-300-000-miles-logged-not-a-single-accident-under-computer-control/260926/
While the right wing focuses on debt, culture wars, and hatred of working together,
we need to focus on the way forward. The landing of Curiosity makes me proud to be an American and a nerd, and proves that we are capable of stunning things when we work together. It takes the power of a nation to split the atom, land men on the moon, and now land a car sized rover on the surface of Mars. The government in this case provides the ability to do research and exploration that will never yield a profit, yet is critical to our civilization and humanity as a whole. We can do great things when we work together, and our government is how we accomplish this task. We need to fight against forces that would take away the best of all of us because of spite and petty greed.
ZeroHedge: Turns Out China IS Lying About Everything
In what may come as a shocking surprise to exactly nobody, the next great discovery as more and more layers of the global ponzi onion are exposed, is that China was, in fact, lying about everything. Yes, we know, stunning.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/turns-out-china-lying-about-everything
China has been messing with us for years. Our government has allowed it because the elite have gotten very rich off the ponzi scheme, but it needs to stop. China has not been acting in good faith and yet we are paralyzed to do anything about it.
How about we have another space race?
China will launch its first manned mission to an orbiting space laboratory in mid-June, according to state media reports and the country's human spaceflight agency.
A Long March 2F rocket will launch three astronauts aboard a Shenzhou 9 capsule for China's first manned space docking at the mini-space station Tiangong-1. The space lab module has been circling Earth unmanned since its launch last year.
"The Shenzhou 9 will perform our country's first manned space docking mission with the orbiting Tiangong 1 space lab module," the Xinhua news agency quoted Zhou Jianping, chief designer of China's manned space program, as saying June 9.
Zhou's comments came as he accompanied the rocket set to launch the Shenzhou 9 mission to a pad at China's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the country's northwest region.
The mission, Zhou told Xinhua, will be a major milestone for China's space exploration program.
*more*
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47749798/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.T9PwycXu5ZQ
Our economy and technological development has stagnated as of late, and a major investment in research is needed to get us out of our stagnation. The economic prosperity 90s and earls 00s was partly due to the invention of powerful PCs and the internet, which led to economic activity. Unfortunately we only do research as a country when we are scared of someone else. This worked great during the cold war. I don't agree with the reasons, but the outcome from the research investment has been spectacular.
The result of this is that we, unfortunately, need to scare half the country into investing in science and engineering. The threat of a Red Mars should be plenty. The investment in a real space race combined with policy changes to help with the economic problems would probably be enough to get us out of this mess. But we need to scare people into the correct action, because we as Americans accomplish great things when we are scared...
Wait... China owes us $1 trillion? Is this article real?
China has a secret: It owes American investors hundreds of billions of dollars.
The Chinese government doesn’t like to talk about it, and the U.S. government doesn’t want to raise it. But decades ago, Beijing defaulted on debt owed to Americans, as well as investors and governments around the world.
More than 20,000 American investors own this debt. The U.S. government may also own Chinese war debt, unpaid since World War II.
The story begins in 1913, when the government of China began issuing bonds to foreign investors and governments for infrastructure work to modernize the country. As the country fell into civil war in 1927, paying these debts became increasingly difficult and the government fell into default. Even so, in April 1938, the Nationalist government of China began to issue U.S.-dollar denominated bonds to finance its war against Japan.
The government issued these bonds into 1940, and the U.S. government further provided a $500 million credit to China in March 1942. China doesn’t appear to have repaid this debt either, according to State Department records.
The new Communist government in 1949 refused to pay any of these claims. In 1979, as part of normalizing relations, Washington released government financial claims regarding the expropriation of American property and appears to have dropped the matter of the war debt entirely.
However, it is one thing for government decision-makers to let go of government debt. And it is another thing for individual citizens to press their claims. Some U.S. investors tried to sue the Chinese government in the 1980s and 1990s, but the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act makes it hard because the law generally says U.S. courts do not have jurisdiction.
<snip>
The rest is at the link:
http://savannahnow.com/opinion/2012-05-21/analysis-chinas-secret-it-owes-americans-nearly-1-trillion#.T778QsXu5ZQ
In truth these time scales are similar to the US debt to China will be in the long run. So the question becomes: Is this just an internet rumor, or is this true? If so, the obligations of debt don't seem to be that consistent.
New online community intended for homebound protestants
There is a brand new online church being set up that is intended to accommodate to the homebound elderly and chronically ill patients. Pastor Jill is dedicated to just this online community and this is not simply recordings of a typical church service. Anyone interested can follow the link to see advent services.
http://peacechapel.org/
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