Memorial Day

President Obama will not be at Arlington National Cemetery honoring our military casualties today. He will not be there because he is in Chicago on vacation.

This will do it

North Korea sinks a South Korean ship, kills 40 some odd sailors and the U.S. insists a powerful response is called for so Hillary Clinton says she is going to take the matter to the U.N.

The Pentagon Brownie Recipe

Sure enough, the military has a recipe for making brownies. That may not be surprising, but the fact that it is 26 pages long might be.

Here is the link.

$234 Million and no jobs

Detroiter Mark Brisker had high hopes of securing a future as a green-collar worker. Michigan officials had touted green energy as a fast-growing employment sector and part of a fix for the state’s economic woes. An influx of federal funding and the creation of training programs in green trades, such as weatherizing homes, were intended to quickly grow the industry.

But five months after completing weatherization training offered by Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn, Brisker remains out of work. And jobs in this specialization, which focuses on improving the energy efficiency of homes and buildings, have been slow to materialize.

“As of yet, very few — if any of the students — have found work,” said Brisker, 51, a former chemical plant worker. “Yet the schools are still cranking out graduates.”

Although the federal stimulus package earmarked $234 million to weatherize 3,000 low-income Michigan homes — about 10 times more than average — and create jobs, the money has been slow to trickle to contractors and other employers.

National Observer

The no health insurance option

AT&T spends $2.4 billion a year on coverage for its almost 300,000 active employees, a number that would fall to $600 million if AT&T stopped providing health care coverage and paid the penalty option instead.

Other large companies face similar situations. The question is, therefore, will these companies be sorely tempted to just pay the fine and let the workers look for health insurance elsewhere? It could be a great financial boon to any company with more than 50 employees.

The European Solution

There is great news coming out of Europe this morning. The world has been anxious about Greece because they owe so much money they may default on repayments of this debt. Well, other countries in Europe has come to their aid as of this weekend. The Euro countries will create a fund of billions of dollars (Euros) to back up Greece and other countries like Spain, Portugal, and Italy who owe so much that default on their debt may become a problem. Sounds good, doesn't it. Don't look too deeply into this great news, however. If you happen to wonder where the money being used to back this debt is coming from, look no further. They are borrowing it.

Our time is coming

The most debilitating disease afflicting Greece is also present in every other western European country. They all have more and more people living off of an expansive social welfare structure, even as their workforce is aging, shrinking, and losing ground to global competitors.
Thus, the problem is now acute in Europe, but when the only one hiring now is our federal government with its gold-plated benefits and labor goodies, the U.S. is on the road to that we see in Greece. What will our government workers do when they lose the gravy train they are now on? It won't be pretty.

The true stripes of Obama

Well this is what Barack Obama had to say to a crowd in Illinois, "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money."

And he wants to decide where that point is.

Gold prices

Gold has rallied almost 6 percent in April, its biggest one-month rise since November, as credit ratings downgrades of Greece, Spain and Portugal unleashed a wave of risk aversion, channeling money into gold. This is just the start since tax and spend by every country will reduce all currency value.

It is the law

Since 1952 federal law has said: "Every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him."

Now Obama and other liberals are claiming that if Arizona law enforcement officers ask for those papers they are somehow Nazis and anti-immigrant.