We'll Wait It Out

We are all packed and ready to start our trip south for the winter, however the weather has interfered with our plans.  We were hoping to be on our way, however we have had a bout of sleet and snow here on the farm.

Have I mentioned before how much I hate snow and ice?  It seems like we can't get a break from the weather we are trying to get away from, so we'll just wait it out. 

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Poised To Get Screwed

U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced Monday that it would buy the pharmaceutical company Allergan for $160 billion to slash its U.S. tax bill in a move called “tax inversion.”  Tax inversions are a form of tax avoidance, whereby corporations relocate their legal domicile to a lower-tax nation while retaining its material operations in its country of origin.

The acquisition, which would create the world's largest drugmaker and shift Pfizer's headquarters to Ireland, would also be the biggest-ever instance of a U.S. company re-incorporating overseas to lower its taxes.  To avoid potential restrictions, the transaction was structured as smaller, Dublin-based Allergan buying Pfizer, although the combined company will be known as Pfizer Plc.

Pfizer, one of the largest prescription drug companies in America, not only paid no federal income taxes from 2010 to 2012, it received $2.2 billion in tax refunds from the IRS at the same time it made $43 billion in profits worldwide.

In 2012, Pfizer stashed $73 billion in profits offshore and has used aggressive offshore tax strategies to avoid paying U.S. income taxes.  Pfizer’s revenue for 2014 was $49.6 billion.

Once again, another U.S. corporation is taking advantage of the tax laws to avoid paying taxes.  Congress does nothing and lets it happen.  The Internal Revenue Service has said that their hands are tied and they can do nothing to stop tax inversions and only Congress can act through legislation.  All the while the taxpayer is poised to get screwed again.

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What Could Have Gone Wrong

As a purse snatcher was being subdued by bystanders in a Bellmead, Texas Walmart parking lot and breaks away, a woman fires off a shot at him.

The man snatched the purse of an elderly woman as she and a companion were unloading groceries in the parking lot. Between four and five men tackled the thief and pinned him to the ground, however he broke loose, at which point a woman who was standing by took a shot at him as he attempted to flee.

In the cell phone video other people and passing vehicles can be seen as the woman fires at the fleeing man.  Just as police arrive, the woman with the gun can be seen leaving the scene.

So, is this one of Wayne Lapierre's “good guys with a gun”?  Watching the video made me wonder instead what really could have gone wrong.

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In Memoriam • November 22, 1963

A Proper Tribute

The final voyage of the Edmund Fitzgerald began November 9, 1975 at the Burlington Northern Railroad Dock No.1, Superior, Wisconsin. Captain Ernest M. McSorley had loaded her with 26,116 long tons of taconite pellets, made of processed iron ore, heated and rolled into marble-size balls. Departing Superior about 2:30 pm, she was soon joined by the Arthur M. Anderson, which had departed Two Harbors, Minnesota under Captain Bernie Cooper. The two ships were in radio contact. The Fitzgerald being the faster took the lead, with the distance between the vessels ranging from 10 to 15 miles.

Weather conditions continued to deteriorate. Gale warnings had been issued at 7 pm on November 9, upgraded to storm warnings early in the morning of November 10. While conditions were bad, with winds gusting to 50 knots and seas 12 to 16 feet, both Captains had often piloted their vessels in similar conditions.

At 3:30 pm that afternoon, Captain McSorley radioed Captain Cooper and said: "Anderson, this is the Fitzgerald. I have a fence rail down, two vents lost or damaged, and a list. I'm checking down. Will you stay by me till I get to Whitefish?" McSorley was checking down his speed to allow the Anderson to close the distance for safety. Captain Cooper asked McSorley if he had his pumps going, and McSorley said, "Yes, both of them.”  As the afternoon wore on, radio communications with the Fitzgerald concerned navigational information but no extraordinarily alarming reports were offered by Captain McSorley.

According to Captain Cooper, about 6:55 pm, he and the men in the Anderson's pilothouse felt a "bump", felt the ship lurch, and then turned to see a monstrous wave engulfing their entire vessel from astern. The wave worked its way along the deck, crashing on the back of the pilothouse, driving the bow of the Anderson down into the sea.

"Then the Anderson just raised up and shook herself off of all that water.  Another wave just like the first one or bigger hit us again. I watched those two waves head down the lake towards the Fitzgerald, and I think those were the two that sent him under.”   (Great Lakes Historical Society)

I had intended to post this on November 10th - the 40th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald.  Evidence seems to indicate that the hatches on the Fitzgerald were not properly sealed, letting water in during the storm.  

Incidentally, one of my favorite beers is the Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, brewed by the Great Lakes Brewery.

It is a proper tribute to the ill fated ship.

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Simple Minded Patriot

In Coon Rapids, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis, a woman hit another woman with a beer mug when she heard her speaking a foreign language at an Applebee’s restaurant.

Jodie Marie Burchard-Risch and her husband were at the Coon Rapids Applebee’s on Oct. 30  when they became infuriated after hearing a woman speak a foreign language in the booth next to them and confronted the woman.  Burchard-Risch told the woman to "go home" and that "when you're in America you should speak English."

Burchard-Risch

Restaurant supervisors reportedly tried to make Burchard-Risch leave, but she refused and instead began shouting and smashed her beer mug against the woman’s face.

The victim — Asma Jama — grew up in Kenya and was speaking Swahili before she was attacked.  Jama, an ethnic Somali who speaks English, Somali and Swahili, confirmed that she came to Minnesota from Kenya in 2000.

Jama

Jama’s medical bills exceeded $9500 and Burchard-Rich has been charged with simple third-degree assault. 

With all the hate-filled rhetoric against immigrants, especially from politicians, it is no wonder this doesn’t happen more often.  Anti-immigrant fervor is all a simple minded patriot needs to validate going on the attack. 

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Utah's Solution

Utah's solution to homelessness and the associated costs.

Let's hope this spreads nationwide.

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Silly Season

This year Starbucks has changed the design on their holiday coffee cups and the religious right has their panties all in a wad.

In previous years Starbucks has had holiday items (ornaments, reindeer, snowflakes, etc) with their logo printed on the coffee cups.

This year they have gone to plain red cups with their logo. 

Even though the previous cups had secular holiday themes on the cups, the religious right is doing their annual screaming about businesses “waging war on Christmas.”  Humbug.

It’s silly season again.  These religious kooks need to celebrate Christmas in their own way and finally give it a rest.

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Being Obsessive

In 3 weeks we will leave for our Southwest winter stay and I have been going over checklists getting things ready to go.  One of the tasks is checking the lug nuts on the trailer wheels.  As luck would have it, two of the nuts snapped off when I was checking them.  Rats!

I was using a standard lug wrench and certainly wasn’t gorilla tightening them.  I was simply checking to see that they were all tight.  I’m not a metallurgist, but looking at the piece of the studs that were left in the nuts there appears to be striation in the metal making the stud weak. The only other possibility I can figure out is that the lugs were over torqued when we had new tires put on. 

We still have a little time before we leave, so I’ve ordered nuts and studs from the factory to make sure I have the correct ones.  Now it is a matter of towing the trailer to the shop to have the new studs installed.  

I know I’m obsessive about checking and rechecking things, but in this case it may have paid off.  It certainly wouldn’t have been fun having a wheel spin off while tooling down the highway.  I guess it pays to be obsessive.

On a more positive note... our grandson still has his grandpa's receding hairline.

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Enclaves Of Hate

I grew up in North Dakota and now live in Nebraska, so I have been watching with interest the story of a sleaze bag who has been skulking around both states.

Paul Craig Cobb, who lives in Sherwood, North Dakota, is a white supremacist who wants to create all-white communities in every state in a movement known as Pioneer Little Europe.  Earlier this year, he tried to buy property in Antler, North Dakota, but the city spent $35,000 to buy up more than 20 properties to keep him out, according to the Grand Forks Herald.

Cobb is on probation for charges stemming from a November 2013 incident in which he and another man threatened residents of Leith, North Dakota, with guns.  He had moved to Leith, population 20, with plans to start an all-white enclave. Cobb pleaded guilty in 2014 to one count of felony terrorizing and five misdemeanor counts of menacing.

Now, Cobb has made a move to buy up property in Nebraska for his supremacist scheme.  He bought tax liens on the properties in Nebraska at a sheriff’s sale in late September and paid $125 for two properties in Red Cloud and $3,410 for one in Inavale. If the taxes remained unpaid, he could have foreclosed and taken possession. 

News spread quickly after he bought the tax liens, and an emergency meeting in Red Cloud drew nearly 100 people.  Community members paid off the nearly $7,500 in delinquent taxes and fees, plus an additional $3,400 in unpaid taxes not yet considered delinquent. The court cases for the foreclosures were dismissed on Tuesday.

Red Cloud Heritage and Tourism Director Jarrod McCartney said, “It is my personal belief that his ideology would corrupt, pervert and severely diminish the high quality of life we are lucky enough to experience here in Red Cloud.”  He said the community created a Red Cloud Beautification Trust and used it to help the owners of the Red Cloud properties pay off their back taxes.

In September, community development officials in the Kansas towns of Smith Center and Lebanon warned people not to sell property to strangers offering cash after a man believed to be Cobb tried and failed to buy buildings in those towns.

Kudos to those folks in North Dakota and Nebraska who stopped this creep from creating his enclaves of hate.

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Still A Weasel

Martin Shkreli, CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, has been called to testify before the U.S. Senate why he jacked up the price overnight of the drug Daraprim from $13.50 a pill to $750.

Daraprim is used in parasitic infections that can be life-threatening for babies, the elderly and AIDS patients.

Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) sent the former hedge fund manager a letter Wednesday asking him to appear before a special committee on aging on December 9th.

The senators expressed concern that Shkreli  had contributed to the rising cost of health care for all Americans by hundreds of millions of dollars — particularly the elderly.

“Some of the recent actions we’ve seen in the pharmaceutical industry—with corporate acquisitions followed by dramatic increases in the prices of pre-existing drugs—have looked like little more than price gouging,” McCaskill said.

Great.  Now we get to hear this weasel yammer on about how tough it is to make a profit with his research and development, advertising, labor and production costs.

Blah, blah, blah.

Bottom line is that he is still an opportunistic price gouging weasel. 

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Please Pass The Antacid

Congress has just released the calendar for 2016.  No big surprise, they will work fewer days than the year before.  They will be in session for 111 days, which includes two months they won’t be in session at all.  They plan to take off all of August and October to campaign for the 2016 elections.

Lawmakers talk about the plight of poor and middle-class Americans, however few of them can relate financially.  More than half are millionaires.

The median net worth of a member of Congress is $1.03 million, compared to $56,355 for the average U.S. family, all the while we are paying them $174,000 in salary, plus benefits.

Somebody please pass the antacid.

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How Are We Suppose To Tell?

Last Saturday 33-year-old Noah Harpham killed three people during a shooting rampage in Colorado Springs, Colorado and police could do nothing to stop him until he committed the shootings.

Naomi Bettis, a neighbor of Harpham, called 911 to report that Harpham was in the street armed. The dispatcher told her there was nothing that they could do because of Colorado's open carry law.

"He did have a distraught look on his face," Bettis told Denver Post. "It looked like he had a rough couple days or so."  Moments later, Bettis watched in horror as Harpham killed a young man on a bicycle,  35-year-old Andrew Alan Myers.

"I heard the young man say, 'Don't shoot me! Don't shoot me!'" Bettis recalled.  She then watched Harpham walk down a street and heard more gunfire.  Jennifer MichelleVasquez, 42, and Christy Baccus-Galella, 34, were killed by Harpham before he died in a shootout with police.

The gun crazies are fond of saying "The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun" and presumably "open carry" is one way.

How are we suppose to tell which is which?!  

Obviously, Harpham was a good guy with a gun who crossed over to being a bad guy with a gun. Unfortunately, three innocent people who didn't know the difference are dead.

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Plain Crazy

Scarlett Lewis, the mother of first grader Jesse Lewis who was murdered in the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in December, 2012 that took the lives of 20 small children and 6 school staffers, has written a book titled Nurturing Healing Love: A Mother’s Journey of Hope and Forgiveness. 

But according to the Seattle Times, instead of receiving support after enduring an unthinkable loss, conspiracy theorists have come out in force to malign Lewis.  

Unbelievably, the conspiracy theorists who say the event never happened and the gun crazies have come out en masse to malign Lewis.  

Comments in the book review section on Amazon call Lewis a liar (among other things) and claim the shooting never really happened and was staged to take away everyone’s guns:

“DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK !! This book is based on pure lies. The Sandy Hook Elementary did not have a school shooting, this was a Hoax that was used to create laws under false pretense !! Instead of buying this book, research the video called “We need to talk about Sandy Hook” And here’s the best part… It’s FREE to watch the video. These people are profiting off of LIES, and they are erasing truth from history. This is Fraud, Treason, And Tyranny.”

Another user said Lewis should be jailed and claimed no one was killed at Sandy Hook.

“‘Scarlett’ should be put in jail! Zero Stars!! This book should be labeled ((FICTION)) The Sandy Hook Event is *PROVEN* to have been a ‘drill’. If you are reading this and didn’t know that this event was a staged psycological operation… you should do some research. ;) …The good news is nobody died,” the unnamed user wrote.

Another poster named echoed the same ideas.

“This woman is a liar no child died at Sandy hook. Sandy hook is a hoax, it was staged. Go watch “We need to talk about Sandy Hook” and pay attention. SANDY HOOK WAS A STAGED HOAX NO ONE DIED!”

These people are just plain crazy and what is scary is that they have guns.

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