I think people are very confused with the terms million… billion… and trillion. We just cannot put are arms around the concept of billions and trillions.

Most people relate large sums of money to their income. If you earn $50k per year you can understand that double that is $100k. So you can see that ten times that is 1 million dollars. These are numbers we can all manage.

The problem is when we look at a billion or a trillion. The numbers just don’t have meaning. I would suggest that we stop using the terms billion and trillion and stick with millions. If we can understand what a million is than why muddle it with more incomprehensible terms.

This is much easier.

• A billion is one thousand million.
  So, if the US budget is $3 billion dollars, it really is “three thousand million” dollars. It keeps all the numbers in perspective that way.
• A trillion one hundred thousand million. Yipes.

So, if we need to spend a trillion dollars to get the economy going, we are spending one hundred thousand million dollars.

The democrats have been asking who’s running the Republican party. My vote would be British Minister Daniel Hannan. Listen to his March 26 Speech to Parliament.

Note: At one point he mentions that Britains budget debt is 10% of their GDP. The US budget has been running about 20% more than our GDP, and President Obama is looking to increase it to 22-23% of GDP. Ouch.

Do you hate the AIG bonuses? Sure, join the crowd.

But, there are two sides to every story and this one is a must read if you want to get the full perspective on the AIG bonuses.

“Dear AIG, I Quit”

An op-ed to the New York Times on March 23, 2009. Written by Jake DeSantis, Exec VP of AIG’s financial products unit. Please read the entire article here:

AIG I QUIT. New York Times 3/23/09

Excerpts:

After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials.

I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid.

None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house.

This guy worked the last year for one dollar, and was promised the bonus. The President, Secretary of the Treasury and many Congressional leaders all knew these bonuses were going to be paid in March.

This country was built on laws, not mob rule. Until now.

There are some on the right now crying that the end is near… the economy is going to tank… the Socialists are taking over.

Give me a break. Obama is the President elect, get over it. I didn’t vote for him (along with 56 million other people), but that doesn’t mean he isn’t my President too.  I think it’s important to give him a chance at governing. All we have heard up to this point is his promises, and what the other side has said about his past. We have yet to see him do anything.

Now it’s time to judge him on his actions. Let’s see what he does before we condemn him and his policies. I know, the left never did this for Bush 43. They hated him from day one. They always believed he stole the election in Florida, and it was down hill from there. Their hatred for Bush should not be the driving event in the way we judge Obama.

Just because there are lunitics on the left doesn’t me we should do the same with President Obama.

The election of Barak Obama actually makes me proud to be an American. I am old enough to remember a day when a black person could not buy a house in my neighborhood. I really thought that even in this day and age, Americans would not vote for a black President.

I still have reservations about his economic and energy positions, but let’s wait and see if he governs from the middle like he claims he will or listens to Pelosi and Reid and steers way left.

The proof is in his actions, I’m willing to wait and see.

Have you heard this? No. I’m not surprised. The main stream (liberal) media has never mentioned it. Obama said this to an editorial board in January 2008. You are seriously going to vote for this guy? The more we know about him the more scary he becomes. He guarantees we’ll pay more for energy and he promisis to force the coal industry out of business.

Listen to Obama, in his own words:

Let’s put this to bed right now.

Right now, the LA Times has a video where Obama (along with Bill Ayers and other PLO supporters)  toasts Rashid Khalidi. He was the former spokesperson for Yasser Arafat?

Can you imagine if they had a video of John McCain toasting someone that bombed an abortion clinic, or was a known white supremacist? Please, we would see that on every news cast day after day after day.

I really don’t expect anything else from the LA Times. They don’t even hide their left views. But where is the rest of the main stream media? Why isn’t NBC or CBS or ABC or even CNN screaming for the video?  Why are they not yelling that the people have a  ”right to know”.

Put it to bed. There is no such thing as the “main stream media”. Now it’s the “liberal media”.

The only way for John McCain to win this election is to propose an economic recovery plan that will bring us out of this economic tsunami we are currently in. We are told the current economic situation is due to a squeeze in the credit markets, but that does not “register” with most people. They see the stock market falling, they hear about unemployment increasing, gas prices (although they have come down a little lately) are still way too high, they are just getting bombarded with one bad economic story after another.

In the debate last night, McCain unveiled a “new” program to stop the slide in home prices. The problem is, nobody listening to the debate heard or understood that this was a new program and that it may fix a serious problem.

Come on John, get with the program. If you are going to announce something, announce it. Don’t just mention it in passing.

The only way McCain can win:

1. Tie the economic recovery and the oil/gas crisis together. Announce a major X billion dollar program to fix the economy and get energy independence all in one, long term plan.
2. Announce that the moratorium for off shore drilling off both the east and west coasts is permanent. He will appoint an energy “Czar” that will have the power to fast track all the drilling permits so the oil companies don’t get locked up in the courts with law suits filed by the environmental kooks.
3. Nationalize all the off shore drilling past the 10 or 20 mile limit. In other words, once you are 10 miles off shore, the states have no jurisdiction. All environment suits must be filed in one federal court. State courts will not have the right to hold up drilling permits any longer.
4. Give the states an economic incentive to drill for oil off their shores. Make it financially lucrative for them. In California, they are currently having a major budget shortfall. The Governor just came to Washington begging for a bailout. McCain should announce that California’s budget shortfall could easily be overcome with his offshore drilling plan.
5. Announce that shale oil recovery programs will start again and give companies incentives to extract the oil out of the shale. There have been some new advances in the techniques over the past few years, but because you cannot mine this in most states anymore, large scale testing has not been done. Remove all the restrictions.
6. Announce that Sarah Palen will head a new “Energy to Jobs” program. With her experience with this in Alaska, she is well qualified in this area to do so… one of the things she is actually qualified to do. All this new oil drilling will need thousands (maybe a million) new jobs. They will be needed off shore, but also on shore support jobs. Not to mention the economic stimulation in the areas where drilling will happen. Homes, restaurants, hotels… This will bring new jobs to new areas.
7. Use the T Boon Pickens concept to develop wind power over as an alternative to oil to generate electricity throughout the midwest. Put some teeth into the idea. It will take 8-10 years to develop and build, but this will also create jobs and get us off the oil fix.
8. Propose that the US becomes an oil exporter  within 10 years. Over that time we will wean our country off the dependency of oil, but other less developed countries will still have a tremendous need for oil. Once we no longer need so much oil, we can be the largest oil exporter in the world and compete one on one with the mid east exporters.
9. To get to this point we must bridge the next 10-20 years with alternative energy sources, until we develop the “green” sources like wind, geo-thermal, tide, solar, etc. To do that  he should announce:
   • Clean coal plants to generate electricity in the areas of the country that have the bulk of the coal, mostly the eastern half. We have a hundred years worth of coal underground. There is no reason to import oil to make electricity when we have all this coal.
   • Build nuclear plants throughout the country. The rest of the world uses nuclear, we are in the dark ages by refusing to use it. Outline the cost benefits along with the ecological benefits.
10. Announce that ANWAR is no longer off limits. Explain to the people just how little land is involved in ANWAR. Have Sara Palen take the credit for changing your mind on why we should drill in this area and how it will not hurt the environment.
11. Announce that you will have incentives for people to buy and convert automobiles that run on natural gas. Explain just how much natural gas we have and that it is available to drill. Explain how many other countries are using natural gas to power it’s vehicles and the conversion would not be a major event.

I have no idea what the above will cost, or if every idea is viable, but that doesn’t matter. It’s an election season, politicians promise the world and very seldom deliver. John McCain must sell  a plan like this to the people if he wants to be President. He cannot compete with Obama on most issues unless he gets specific.

T Boon Pickens is gaining real headway with the public with his plan and his ads every day about one aspect of his plan or another. I think McCain should do exactly the same thing. Every day outline his 10 (or 12 or15) point plan on how to fix the economy and the energy crisis  all at the same time.

Visionary… John. Do it.

Please. Go ahead. The media keeps trashing her and they have no idea how it helps McCain and Palin secure the base of the Republican party.

This morning, I saw Joan Walsh (editor of Salon Magazine) on Morning Joe and she mentioned something about “Sara Palin’s horrible interview with Charlie Gibson last week”. Even Mika Brzezinski had issue with that one.  Joan… the only people that had an issue with Sarah Palin in that interview were the people who would never vote for a Republican no matter what they say or do.

The more you trash her, the more the base loves her. The liberal press just keeps beating up on Palin and it’s obvious that they have given Barack Obama a free pass on the very same things. You never looked at his “record” like you look at her record. You never looked at his “background” like you are delving into hers.

Go to Alaska and dig up whatever trash you can. The more the better! No matter what you say about her, you do it in the condescending pompous attitude that makes the heartland love her.

Great job.

Charlie, don’t you think it would have been better to ask her questions about what she has done in her political career, rather than what she doesn’t know?

All the questions you asked on foreign policy were worthless. She obviously was coached on the answers. What good is that? You know and we know she has no foreign policy experience. You should have asked here how she could govern if she were President without any. Asking her “gotcha” questions does not enlighten the country on who she really is.

Asking here if she agrees with the “Bush Doctrine” is stupid! What you are really asking her is if she knows what the Bush Doctrine is. Who cares, and who knows now what is really is? This is what Wikipedia says:

The Bush Doctrine is a phrase used to describe various principles of United States president George W. Bush, created in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. There are many and varied elements to the phrase. It is sometimes described as the policy that the United States has the right to treat countries that harbor or give aid to terrorist groups as terrorists themselves, which was used to justify the invasion of Afghanistan.^[1] Later it came to include additional elements, including the controversial policy of preventive war, which held that the United States should depose foreign regimes that represented a supposed threat to the security of the United States, even if that threat was not immediate (used to justify the invasion of Iraq), a policy of supporting democracy around the world, especially in the Middle East, as a strategy for combating the spread of terrorism, and a willingness to pursue U.S. military interests in a unilateral way.

It’s obviously open to interpretation, and I believe there has never been an “official” document from the White House declaring what it is.

You blew your chance Charlie.

BTW: Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, George W Bush and many other Presidents had none either.

Come on Link! Calling Sarah Palin a “cocky wacko”. You are the cocky one, not to mention the most self centered non-republican in Rhode Island.

I mentioned in a previous post, John McCain was the only sitting senator to come to Rhode Island when Chaffee was running for re-election. Not only is it total ungrateful to McCain, he now is dissing his choice for VP.

He is really clueless though. He also said naming Sarah Palin as McCain’s running mate is energising the Obama supporters. Has he noticed what it’s done to the Republican base? Oh yeah. I forgot. Lincoln Chaffee never gave a damn about the Republican base.