Cost will always tarnish the shuttle’s reputation. Once sold to Congress with promises of weekly flights for just $7 million a pop, the shuttle program never managed to make spaceflight routine or inexpensive. The shuttle program, in its totality, has cost more than a billion dollars per flight.
Governor Doofus Shuts Down Minnesota
Excerpt:
Governor Mark Dayton, a Democrat, shut down state offices this week in Minnesota by not signing on to the largest budget in state history. It's the stuff of theater of the absurd, and ironic too: It puts more than 24,000 state workers out of work temporarily, dealt them by a wild-eyed governor they helped elect. Irony never had it so good.
At issue here in Minnesota (my summertime home) is a slightly goofy governor's proposal to foist an even higher tax on "the wealthy," tagging Gopher State sluggards with the second highest income tax rate in the nation. The rich. Who needs' em?
Besides the second highest tax brackets in the nation, Minnesota suffers from the third highest income tax on business income, too, at 9.5 percent at the top tier. High taxes are a legacy of the long-in-power Democrats' hostility to business in this bone-chilling state.
Well known in corporate circles, if not by local liberal news media, is the confluence of sky-high taxes (called the Land of 10,000 Taxes) is that highly respected home-bred, state-domiciled businesses, such as 3M, put down roots routinely in other states, as Boeing did in South Carolina, based on the high tide of taxes and regulations. Oh yes, and also on whether unions' swagger is less than in this dues-coercive, non-right-to-work state. Progressivism here, it's made terrific headway. Quietly, without a lot of suspicion of its real aims.
Short take: An early bet on GOP in budget in stalemate
Excerpt:
Friday was Day 1 Without A Salary for more than 23,000 workers in Minnesota. And while their adrenaline is running high, financial hardship is a reality, especially in one-paycheck households.
Their hardship will make the kind-hearted Dayton hard-pressed to hold out for an extended period of time in the budget face-off.
In contrast, key Republican constituencies will face some hardships and inconveniences — businesses needing various licenses or permits, for example. But the pain won’t be felt on the same scale.
Dayton’s leverage in budget negotiations now depends on how long he’s willing to keep core constituencies out of work.
The soft shutdown gave Republicans an advantage and may allow them to walk away with a spending cuts-heavy budget and a reason to say “We prevailed” in 2012.
$5,000, 42 butter sticks, 1 win
Excerpt:
Auditions were given to a half dozen actresses using Snickers and Three Musketeers candy bars as props for the butter.
Edwards, 42, who has a theater background and does voice-overs for radio commercials, was selected because of her acting ability to eat the prop almost as an afterthought while engrossed in something else -- in this case, watching TV.
"We weren't looking for a fashion model," Preston said. "We wanted a young mom, a regular gal, someone who was comfortable in sweatpants and a sweatshirt." Edwards' pierced nose had to be covered with makeup.
The ad was shot in the Excelsior living room of executive producer Mark Setterholm, the president and owner of Drive Thru TV.
Just before the shoot, Setterholm went to the Byerly's in Chanhassen to buy the butter. "There was so much butter in my cart I felt I had to make excuses. I told the checkout crew that, no, I wasn't addicted to making Christmas cookies."
When Edwards arrived at the set early on a November morning with a cup of coffee in hand, she was greeted by a crew of 20 and two coolers packed with sticks of butter.
"That's when it hit me that I'd really be eating butter," Edwards recalled.
Until that moment she had been imagining how many different ways a person could eat a stick of butter. Her ideas swayed between eating a candy bar, an ear of corn, a banana, or all of the above.
The shoot lasted until early afternoon and involved more than 25 takes and 42 sticks of butter.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Monday that the State Department played an instrumental role in “sealing the deal” for pop-rock star Lady Gaga to perform at a gay pride rally in Rome, Italy.
Clinton specifically pointed to a letter that David Thorne, the U.S. ambassador to Italy, sent to Lady Gaga urging her to participate in the event.
“And then there is the work that our embassy team in Rome has been doing,” Clinton said. “Two weeks ago they played an instrumental role in bringing Lady Gaga to Italy for a Euro Pride concert.
“Now as many of you know Lady Gaga is Italian American and a strong supporter of LGBT rights,” said Clinton. “And the organizers of the Euro Pride event desperately wanted her to perform and a letter to her from Ambassador Thorne was instrumental in sealing the deal.”
Resources on "Definite Atonement"
Excerpts:
“The sin of Adam did not make the condemnation of all men merely possible; it was the ground of their actual condemnation. So the righteousness of Christ did not make the salvation of men merely possible, it secured the actual salvation of those for whom He wrought.”
Charles Hodge
The Arminians say, 'Christ died for all men.' Ask them what they mean by it. Did Christ die so as to secure the salvation of all men? They say, 'No, certainly not.' We ask them the next question: Did Christ die so as to secure the salvation of any man in particular? They answer 'No.' They are obliged to admit this, if they are consistent. They say, 'No; Christ has died that any man may be saved if ?' and then follow certain conditions of salvation. Now, who is it that limits the death of Christ? Why, you. You say that Christ did not die so as infallibly to secure the salvation of anybody. We beg your pardon, when you say we limit Christ's death; we say, 'No, my dear sir, it is you that do it.' We say Christ so died that he infallibly secured the salvation of a multitude that no man can number, who through Christ's death not only may be saved, but are saved, must be saved and cannot by any possibility run the hazard of being anything but saved. You are welcome to your atonement; you may keep it. We will never renounce ours for the sake of it.
Charles Spurgeon
Mr. Nader isn't calling for a router recall or claiming the company's networks are unsafe at any speed. Instead, he wants the tech company to pay a bigger dividend to boost its shares.
The consumer advocate's motives are far from altruistic. He is a longtime disgruntled Cisco investor who called the company's share performance "appalling." In a private letter to Cisco Chief Executive John Chambers sent June 13, Mr. Nader blasted the CEO for not doing enough to lift shares of the technology company and said "it is time for a long overdue Cisco shareholder revolt against a management that is oblivious to building or even maintaining shareholder value," according to the letter.
In 4 p.m. Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading Thursday, Cisco's shares rose 11 cents, or 0.7%, to $15.47. They are down nearly a third in the past year and are off 75% from their all-time, tech-bubble high. In comparison, the Nasdaq Composite index is down about 48% from its all-time high in March 2000.
Among the specific actions Mr. Nader suggested in the letter are the distribution of a one-time dividend of $1 a share and an increase in Cisco's annual dividend to 50 cents from 24 cents.
"If they can't give shareholders value, then they have to give cash," Mr. Nader said in an interview this week, adding that the company's stock has plummeted even though its profits generally were on the rise until recently.
Cisco, like many big tech companies, has been accumulating cash despite its weak growth. It holds $43 billion in cash, nearly half of its market value.
10 Tax-Unfriendly States for Retirees
Excerpt:
#2 MINNESOTA
State Income Tax: 5.35%-7.85%
State Sales Tax: 6.875% (cities and counties can add another 2.65%)
Estate Tax/Inheritance Tax: No/No
Minnesota offers retirees cold comfort on the tax front. Social Security income is taxed to the same extent it is taxed on your federal return. Pensions are taxable regardless of where your pension was earned. Income-tax rates are high, and sales taxes can reach 9.53% in some cities. Food, clothing, and prescription and nonprescription drugs are exempt from sales taxes. The North Star State does offer some residents 65 and older who have income of $60,000 or less the option of deferring a portion of their property tax. But this is a low-interest loan, not a tax-forgiveness program.
Police: 'Jackass' star Ryan Dunn was drunk and driving over 132 mph
Comment: His name is his legacy! Sad but not surprised!
Infographic: Some People Call it Groupon, Some Call it "Grouponzi"
Comment: Avoid this IPO!
Libya and the Potemkin alliance
Excerpt:
Some people, who know better, insist that although the WPR is a 38-year-old law — passed over Richard Nixon's veto — it is somehow a "dead letter." Their theory is that any law a president considers annoying, or Congress considers inconvenient, or some commentators consider unwise, is for those reasons nullified.
Although this war has no discernible connection with U.S. national security, it serves the national interest, in three ways. It is awakening some legislators to their responsibilities. It is refuting the pretense that the United Nations sets meaningful parameters to wars it authorizes — or endorses, which is quite different. And it is igniting a reassessment of NATO, a Potemkin alliance whose primary use these days is perverse: It provides a patina of multilateralism to U.S. military interventions on which Europe is essentially a free rider.
...
Obama, a novel kind of commander in chief, explained in passive syntax that "it is our military that is being volunteered by others to carry out missions." These "others" would rather finance their welfare states than their militaries, so they cannot wage war for 10 weeks without U.S. munitions and other assets.
Last month, this column noted that NATO was created in 1949 to protect Western Europe from the Soviet army; it could long ago have unfurled the "Mission Accomplished" banner; it has now become an instrument of mischief, and when the Libyan misadventure is finished, America should debate whether NATO also should be finished. Defense Secretary Robert Gates had another purpose — NATO's revival — but he recently fueled that debate when, in Brussels, he predicted "a dim, if not dismal future" for the military alliance unless its members reinvest in their militaries.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. military spending has more than doubled, but that of NATO's 27 other members has declined 15 percent. U.S. military spending is three times larger than the combined spending of those other members. Hence Gates warned that "there will be dwindling appetite and patience in" America for expending "increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense." Already, U.S. officers in Afghanistan sometimes refer to the NATO command there — officially, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) — as "I Saw Americans Fighting."
After a recent NATO attack on a tented encampment where Gaddafi has met foreign leaders, the New York Times reported: "The desert strike appeared to show the alliance's readiness to kill Col. Gaddafi. A NATO statement described the target as a ‘command and control facility.' But apart from small groups of soldiers lurking under trees nearby with pickups carrying mounted machine guns, reporters taken to the scene saw nothing to suggest that the camp was a conventional military target."
In March, Obama said that U.S. intervention would be confined to implementing a no-fly zone: "Broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake." By May, Obama's Bushian mission was to make Libyans "finally free of 40 years of tyranny." After more than 10,000 sorties, now including those by attack helicopters, NATO's increasingly desperate strategy boils down to: Kill Gaddafi.
Then what? More incompetent improvisation, for many more months.
Disgust with this debacle has been darkly described as a recrudescence of "isolationism," as though people opposing this absurdly disproportionate and patently illegal war are akin to those who, after 1938, opposed resisting Germany and Japan. Such slovenly thinking is a byproduct of shabby behavior.
In the face of the most stimulative fiscal and monetary policies in our history, we have experienced the loss of over 7 million jobs, wiping out every job gained since the year 2000. From the moment the Obama administration came into office, there have been no net increases in full-time jobs, only in part-time jobs. This is contrary to all previous recessions. Employers are not recalling the workers they laid off from full-time employment.
The real job losses are greater than the estimate of 7.5 million. They are closer to 10.5 million, as 3 million people have stopped looking for work. Equally troublesome is the lower labor participation rate; some 5 million jobs have vanished from manufacturing, long America's greatest strength. Just think: Total payrolls today amount to 131 million, but this figure is lower than it was at the beginning of the year 2000, even though our population has grown by nearly 30 million.
Mr. Immelt chairs the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, and Mr. Chenault is one of its 26 members. They've been at work for 90 days, developing their recommendations. Here are some of the thoughts they've come up with so far, which they enumerated in a Wall Street Journal op-ed article:Comment: ObamaCare is a giant job killing bill!
- Send folks to community colleges and vocational schools. (If nothing else, this feels like work.)
- Cut red tape. (We've been hearing about this pesky red tape forever and finally there's a White House-appointed committee with a magic pair of scissors.)
- Improve visa processes so rich tourists from other countries can more easily visit. (Yes, come see the ancient ruins of the Anasazi, and the foreclosed properties surrounding them, known as America.)
- Get loans to small businesses. (We've heard this before, too. Why can't GE and American Express just show us the money?)
- Put construction workers back to work. (Yeah, go put up another vacant building. Or spray some foam insulation in occupied buildings, and President Obama will put out a press release touting green jobs.)
The story goes that Milton Friedman was once taken to see a massive government project somewhere in Asia. Thousands of workers using shovels were building a canal. Friedman was puzzled. Why weren't there any excavators or any mechanized earth-moving equipment? A government official explained that using shovels created more jobs. Friedman's response: "Then why not use spoons instead of shovels?" That story came to mind last week when President Obama linked technology to job losses. "There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers," he said. "You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don't go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you're using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate." The president calls this a structural issue—we usually call it progress. And it isn't exactly a new phenomenon. It's been going on for centuries, and its pace has accelerated over the past 50 years. Businesses relentlessly look for ways to replace workers with machines. The machines get better and smarter. We go from spoons to shovels to excavators, not the other way around. Telephone switchboard operators lose jobs to automated switching. Toll collectors get replaced by E-ZPass. Auto workers get replaced by robots. The magnitudes are stunning. As the Washington Post reported in 2007: "The textile industry has been particularly aggressive in replacing people with machines. A half-century ago, a typical North Carolina textile worker operated five machines at once, each capable of running a thread through a loom at 100 times a minute. Now machines run six times as fast, and one worker oversees 100 of them." That's a 120-fold increase in output per worker. When a worker is 120 times more productive, you usually don't need as many workers as you did before.
It's true, there are some structural issues in the labor market. New jobs are being created but not at the usual pace and not fast enough to soak up the unemployed. But President Obama is wrong to blame innovation. A bigger problem is housing, where hundreds of thousands of workers have lost their jobs. The source of that problem isn't technology but an over-reaching housing policy and distorted finance. The solution is to let the housing market clear—let interest rates rise, stop subsidizing mortgages, and clean up the foreclosure mess. That would let housing starts return to something like normal. The other challenge is simply confidence. Businesses aren't hiring because they're uneasy about the future. There's no easy way to instill confidence, but we know how to kill it—create uncertainty about taxes and regulations. Reducing that uncertainty would certainly help. In the meanwhile, enjoy the ATM machine and the kiosk at the airport with a clear conscience. Doing more with less is the road to prosperity. When confidence returns, even more Americans will share in the bounty from innovation.
The credit card bank's planned purchase of online banker ING Direct will make it the fifth-biggest U.S. deposit gatherer.
So says SNL Financial, which notes Thursday that the $9 billion deal will vault Capital One (COF) past PNC Financial (PNC), U.S. Bancorp (USB) and the TD Bank unit of Toronto-Dominion (TD) on the list of the biggest U.S. banks by deposits (see chart, right).
So the deal makes Capital One a lot bigger,
PNC Financial Services Group, parent to the Philadelphia region’s third-largest bank by deposits, said Monday it will acquire RBC Bank (USA), the U.S. retail banking subsidiary of Royal Bank of Canada, for $3.45 billion.
The deal would be for 97 percent of book value, or a $112 million discount of RBC’s tangible book value, and will give Pittsburgh-based PNC a significant footprint in the Southeast.
RBC has roughly $25 billion in assets and 424 branches in North Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia and South Carolina. After the deal’s expected close in March 2012, the combined company will have 2,870 branches, ranking it fifth among U.S. banks, up from the No. 7 spot.
“Should there always be more? There should always be more. I always say to my colleagues it’s like a marriage, you may think you’re communicating. If the other party doesn’t think you’re communicating, you’re not communicating enough. So, think of it that way, you can always do more and always, I believe, strengthens our hand if the, you heard me say it before, President Lincoln said public sentiment is everything. Respectful of that, I would always encourage any President to communicate with the American people especially when we are engaged in a military action but I also think that if the Congress doesn’t think that it’s being adequately communicated with, they ought to step up the communication.
16 Meaningless Market Phrases That Will Make You Sound Smart On CNBC
The list:
Comment: Video
- The easy money has been made
- I'm cautiously optimistic
- It's a stockpicker's market
- It's not a stock market. It's a market of stocks
- We're constructive on the market
- Stocks are down on 'profit taking'
- Stocks are up on 'bargain hunting'
- More buyers than sellers
- There's lots of cash on the sidelines
- We're in a bottoming process OR Forming a base OR Bumping along the bottom.
- Overbought
- Oversold
- Buy on weakness
- Sell on strength
- Take a wait-and-see approach
- It's a show-me stock
For Retiring Baby Boomers, 25 Stocks You Should Own
Excerpt:
The result will be an overall dividend increase of 25 percent in each of the next two years and presumably a solid pace afterwards. The analysis models dividend-paying high-quality stocks under this formula against expected bond performance over the next seven years.
Even with a 10-year Treasury yield of 4.5 percent—nearly 50 percent above current levels—the analysis finds that S&P 500 top dividend-yield stocks would return 40 percent better than bonds.
Porn publisher Larry Flynt offers job to embattled ex-congressman
Excerpt:
Larry Flynt, porn publisher and erstwhile snoop into the sex lives of politicians, has offered a job to disgraced former U.S. Congressman Anthony Weiner.
Flynt, founder of Hustler Magazine, made the job offer in a letter that was published in The Huffington Post on Thursday.
"This offer is not made in jest," wrote Flynt.
"Just as we do not undertake insincere political crusades, we do not make insincere job offers."
