ObamaCare Could Cost $115 Billion more?

It seems that we just broke the $1 trillion mark for the price tag for ObamaCare.

President Barack Obama's new health care law could potentially add at least $115 billion more to government health care spending over the next 10 years, congressional budget referees said Tuesday.

If Congress approves all the additional spending called for in the legislation, it would push the ten-year cost of the overhaul above $1 trillion � an unofficial limit the Obama administration set early on.

The spending isn't mandatory but I will be willing to bet that it will actually be too low. This ObamaCare thing is the gift that keeps taking.

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People Walking Away from the Their Homes at Record Rate

I think people need to stop all of the various plans to keep people in their homes and just let the market take its course. As more Americans in an underwater home start to realize they can just walk away and have the bank take it the more these "strategic defaults" are going to take their toll.

"Strategic" defaults accounted for at least 12 percent of all defaults in February, up from about 4 percent in mid-2007, according to a recent Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS - News) report. Analysts led by Vishwanath Tirupattur classified a default as strategic when a homeowner who hadn't previously been delinquent made an on-time mortgage payment one month; skipped payments for the next three months; and stayed current on other consumer debt of $10,000 or more.

I mean many people are just not sure why they need to stay in a negative equity McMansion and pay $5000+ a month when they could just rent a similar place for like $3000. Then they can hopefully use that $2000 savings to pay down the rest of their debt.

You also couple this with the fact that the White House and Congress keeps painting the big banks as bad guys and people just think they are "sticking it to the evil banksters that blew up the economy" when they walk away from their mortgage. I guess all that overheated anti-bank rhetoric is going to have a boomerang effect after all.

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Obama Puts the XBox and the IPad on the Enemies List

I'm not quite sure what he is trying to say here.

"You're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank all that high on the truth meter," Obama said at Hampton University, Virginia.

"With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation," Obama said.

Um, how hard is it to work an Ipod? I thought this guy was supposed to be President Spock? I guess that was supposed to be a self-deprecating joke but it makes him sound like a backwards hick. Also information as a "tool of empowerment and emancipation" was shown in shining colors during Iran's abortive Green Revolution. Too bad Obama ignored the whole thing until it was too late to affect the outcome.

I do agree that critical thinking takes a nosedive due to the Internet. You never get the whole story on anything unless you dig deeper and do your own research. I guess Obama laments that the Left can't lie as effectively through the mouthpiece of the dying newspapers and network news.

I mean people would love him if not for Fox News, the bloggers, and the Tea Partiers organizing with social networking. It isn't his policies or him spending more money on more failed crap then any other President before him. Maybe Obama will think up a dirty tricks group like Nixon did to "silence the IPad and destroy the evil Xbox." Do we get to see some Obamaites sneaking into a Cupertino psychiatrist's office to dig up some dirt on Steve Jobs?

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Obama's Jewish Support Plummets

I think the anti-Israel nature of the Obama Administration is finally starting to create some consequences.

The US Jews polled were asked whether they would: (a) vote to re-elect Obama, or (b) consider voting for someone else. 42% said they would vote for Obama and 46%, a plurality, preferred the second answer. 12% said they did not know or refused to answer.

In the Presidential elections of 2008, 78% of Jewish voters, or close to 8 out of 10, chose Obama. The McLaughlin poll held nearly 18 months later, in April 2010, appears to show that support is down to around 4 out of 10.

From 80% support to 40% support in just a years time. Now wait until Iran gets the bomb on Obama's watch. I guess he will "condemn in the strongest possible terms Israel provoking Iran to act in self defense." I wonder if this is the start of Jewish flight away from the Democratic party? I mean Dems have shown over and over again how they dislike Israel and do everything that they can to embarrass their leaders. The Left has a long history of backing the Palestinians over our only democratic ally in the area.

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Coverage for 20 Somethings Will Drive Up Family Insurance Plans

I thought ObamaCare was going to "bend the cost curve downward." So far it is only bending things upward.

The new benefit will cost $3,380 for each dependent, raising premiums by 0.7 percent in 2011 for employer plans, according to the department's mid-range estimate. Some 1.2 million young adults are expected to sign up, more than half of whom would have been uninsured.

So each family pays $3380 extra a year to insure about 500,000 people? Of course these are the people least likely to need health insurance so this is just pure profit for the insurance companies. The more we get his with ObamaCare the more it seems like it was written by the insurance companies for the insurance companies.

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Failure on the BP Rig Explained

It seems that it was a methane bubble that shot up the drill hole when they were converting the rig from an exploration rig to a production rig.

Up on the rig, the first thing workers noticed was the seawater in the drill column suddenly shooting back at them, rocketing 240 feet in the air. Then, gas surfaced. Then oil.

"What we had learned when I worked as a drill rig laborer was swoosh, boom, run," Bea said. "The swoosh is the gas, boom is the explosion and run is what you better be doing."

The gas flooded into an adjoining room with exposed ignition sources, he said.

What seems to forgotten in this whole mess is that 11 people died in that explosion. All this talk of keeping the boot on the neck of BP kind of flies in the face of those people pretty much dying in an accident probably because a part failed. It is a dangerous job bringing up oil from 3000 feet below the surface of the water at the White House needs to acknowledge the fact that 11 people died so we can drive our SUVs to the mall.

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IAEA to Go After Israel

When Obama shows contempt toward Israel this is what happens.

The 35-nation IAEA board is the agency's decision making body and can refer proliferation concerns to the U.N. Security Council � as it did with Iran in 2006 after Tehran resumed uranium enrichment, a potential pathway to nuclear weapons.

A decision to keep the item would be a slap in the face not only for Israel but also for Washington and its Western allies, which support the Jewish state and view Iran as the greatest nuclear threat to the Middle East.

If the Israelis stonewall the IAEA then Iran gets all kinds of bargaining leverage. If the Israelis declare themselves a nuclear power then all of their enemies might be able to go nuclear to in their words "counter the Zionist threat." Whenever there is daylight between Washington and Jerusalem you see this kind of thing happen.

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Trading Error at Fault for Market Meltdown?

Ah it seems that someone put in a $15 billion order to sell P&G stock instead of a $15 million order and that is what caused to market to implode.

"That doesn't happen unless someone made a huge mistake," a trader that declined to be identified for this story told TheStreet about the P&G trade. The same trader said the latest speculation was that Citigroup(PG) was the firm behind the wrong trade, mistakenly putting in a 15 billion sell order, instead of a 15 million one, but the company would not confirm or deny that.

This $15 billion sell order in a stock that is supposed to be a safe haven dropped the market past key technical points and this caused the robots to sell shares as well. This is why the market dropped 1000 points in a few minutes. The market was already worried about Greece and was looking for any excuse to sell off.

Now what I am wondering is if the market will climb a wall of worry or it continues to sell off. I guess it all comes down to whether the Germans are going to do about bailing Greece out. If they nix the idea and the Greeks default on their debt then we are in for a double dip recession. I think the EU should seriously think about kicking Greece out of the union to avoid further damage to the Euro.

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10 Unwritten Rules of Baseball

This is an interesting article that talks about all of the unwritten rules in baseball.

Last month, when A's pitcher Dallas Braden(notes) called out Alex Rodriguez(notes) for cutting across the Oakland Coliseum mound, the country was informed of a small slice of baseball's Code that had lain mostly dormant in recent memory.

It was only one of a litany of unwritten rules that covers major leaguers' actions, designed essentially to preserve a baseline level of respect between competitors. They constitute the moral fabric of the game.

I never heard of the cutting across the mound rule and I have been watching baseball for years. Some of the other ones on this list are pretty obscure for most people watching the game.

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Send in the Black Conservatives

I guess you can point to Obama for this new resurgence in black conservatives running for office.

Among the many reverberations of President Obama�s election, here is one he probably never anticipated: at least 32 African-Americans are running for Congress this year as Republicans, the biggest surge since Reconstruction, according to party officials.

I think one thing the GOP should do is point to the fact that they have been champions of equal rights and that the Democrats were the party of the bigots in the South. It was Democratic filibusters that kept the Equal Rights Amendment from being voted on. Also it was the Republicans who started many of the traditionally black colleges. I also think that the GOP should push the fact that black people are not any better off financially after supporting the Democrats for 30 years.

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David Obey to Retire From the Senate

I guess he just doesn't want to actually run for his seat in the Senate.

Obey won the first of 21 terms in 1969 � when a special election was held after President Richard Nixon tapped Melvin Laird to be his defense secretary. He faced a potentially bruising re-election campaign this fall, and his retirement is likely to make it easier for Republicans to pick up his seat.

Wow 21 strait terms? I guess it is time for him to exit stage left. It seems that his GOP opponent might be sitting pretty now:

Sean Duffy, 38, a Republican district attorney, is seen as the favored candidate in the GOP primary, and his candidacy has attracted the backing of Republicans in Washington as well as the party's 2008 vice president nominee, Sarah Palin, and tea party activists.

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Times Square Bomber Almost Escapes

Well, we can chalk up yet another near failure of the "no-fly" list.

By the time Customs and Border Protection officials spotted Shahzad's name on the passenger list and recognized him as the bombing suspect they were looking for, he was in his seat and the plane was preparing to leave the gate. They knew to look for him because of updates to the no-fly list made earlier in the day.

At the last minute, the pilot was notified, the jetliner's door was opened and Shahzad was taken into custody.

Why doesn't the no-fly list come up when the person is paying cash for the ticket at the counter? You would think that was fairly rare and the ticket taker would raise a red flag. I have a feeling that they didn't pull this guy out of the line and wand him neither. I guess you can't eliminate human error even when the flight originates in the US.

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Why People Dislike the Unions: Written By a Democrat

I had to look up the author of this article because I swear he was from the GOP but no this guy is Willie Brown a retired life-long Democrat politician.

As the private economy has faltered, we increasingly have a two-tier economy: If you're an insider, a unionized government employee, you're in good shape. Even if you don't do a very good job, you won't be fired. Even in hard times, Washington will spend billions in stimulus funds so that you don't get laid off. You won't even have to take much of a pay cut. And you can retire like an aristocrat at taxpayer expense. But if you're an outsider, trying to survive in a world of $10-an-hour jobs, competing with immigrant labor, paying for your own healthcare, forced to send your children to lousy public schools run by unfireable teachers and $100,000-a-year bureaucrats � well, good luck to you. But be sure to vote Democratic.

This has to be the entire problem that people have with unions in a nutshell. The government bails them out at the expense of everyone else. We see them cut sweetheart deals and have pensions that bankrupt their states. The government even has to take over car companies just to keep the UAW in a job.

This two-tier union system that Brown talks about might eventually become one of the deepest fault-lines in the Democratic party. The other potential fault-line is illegal immigrants versus poor American citizens who can't find work. I think the idea that jobs that Americans don't want died when people are reaching 2 years of unemployment.

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British Sniper Now Holds Sniping Distance Record

Now this is one awesome feat of shooting.

Corporal of Horse Craig Harrison fired his consecutive shots from such a long distance that they took almost three seconds to reach their targets.

This was despite the 8.59mm bullets leaving the barrel of his rifle at almost three times the speed of sound.

The distance to his two targets was 8,120ft, or 1.54 miles - according to a GPS system - and about 3,000ft beyond the weapon's effective range.

I wonder what a sniper like Vasily Zaytsev could have done with a rile that could shoot nearly 1.54 miles? He could just find a hiding spot and snipe Taliban all day long and they would never know what hit them.

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Greece to Be Bailed Out

Well at least we won't have a Euro-zone crisis at least until Greece runs out of this money.

Euro-region ministers agreed to a 110 billion-euro ($146 billion) rescue package for Greece to prevent a default and stop the worst crisis in the currency�s 11-year history from spreading through the rest of the bloc.

The funny part is that this is just a rounding error compared to the amount of debt the US has to roll over every few months. The Greeks are so grateful that they are rioting in the streets.

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