We all know politicians and their bureaucratic lap dogs are stupid. We also know that they fanny around trying to find ways to steal more of our money and then waste it on laws and other interference we neither want nor need.
But sometimes their efforts are just staggeringly unnecessary and stupid.
Did you know, for example, that the morons in the US Congress wasted time, money, energy, not to mention paper and ink, discussing and clarifying that any income earned by U.S. residents while in space would be subject to U.S. taxes!
During the Apollo missions we already witnessed the nonsensical spectacle of national heroes like Neil Armstrong having to be processed through US Customs and Immigration when they returned from the Moon. Talk about bureaucratic jobsworth claptrap!
Now the idiots in Congress have declared that colonists on Mars, of whom there are currently, and for the foreseeable future, none, zero and nil, will be taxed on the income they earn while en route to, and living on, the Red Planet. I suppose to continue the madness, the US authorities will try to make the Martians themselves – if we find any – subject to US taxes too!
It’s enough to make you get your antennae in a tangle!
It’s all because the US government is broke and because it wants to have total control over its citizens (not the uber rich ones, of course, they can do whatever they want). Unlike most countries, the United States uses a ‘worldwide’ system of taxation, under which it taxes all income earned by U.S. citizens and residents, regardless of where it is earned.
The arrogance of a ‘worldwide’ catchment is apparently not enough, now America thinks it must have a ‘pan-galactic’ tax system.
At seven times the size of the humongous novel ‘War and Peace’, and at around four million words and counting, the US Tax Code is already monstrously over-sized, but with the whole Universe to cater for it’s only going to get bigger and more complicated. For example, I foresee vast sections trying to explain how to cater for an Earth year of 365 days being factored into a Martian year of 687 days.
Make that getting your antennae in a knot rather than just a tangle.
But no doubt the bureaucrats back on Earth are already salivating at the prospect of drafting even more crap.
As for those with Martian ambitions?
Sorry Elvis, you might as well come back home. We miss you!
I wrote a short post the other day on the subject of failure. I think it was a success 🙂
What hasn’t been a success, however, is America’s foreign policy. I’ve also written about this many times in the past. I find it very annoying that a country as great as America and with so many brilliant people within it can neither elect a smart politician, or even a not so smart politician but one who has enough brains to hire smart advisers.
The current President, Barack Obama, has continued the trend of failure. Particularly with regard to foreign policy, at which he has not only failed but added indecision and procrastination to the mix.
The examples are many, but the latest foreign policy debacle is the leading role America has taken in the imposition of sanctions against Russia. Sanctions that may have been aimed against Russia but which are already starting to backfire against the US.
I noted in another post that sanctions have been imposed in regard to Russian oil and natural gas, which Europe (particularly Germany and France) needs, but America doesn’t; but that the sanctions were not imposed on nuclear fuels, which America does need.
Believe me, the hypocrisy of that has not been lost on the European governments or its public.
And the hypocrisy does not end there.
On the one hand there have been hyped up media statements telling everyone that Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil company, and its head Igor Sechin, have been targeted in the sanctions.
But what hasn’t been trumpeted so loudly is the fact that British oil company BP, owns almost 20% of Rosneft, and has confirmed that it would not be severing ties with the Russian firm.
Similarly, Norway’s Statoil is continuing its partnership with Rosneft to search for oil in the Norwegian section of the Barents Sea.
And France’s major oil and gas company, Total, has announced that it is seeking financing for its next gas project in – where else? – Russia. When they get that financing, amounting to something in the region of $27 billion, it will be in Roubles or maybe even Yuan, but certainly not in US dollars – again thanks to the ill thought out sanctions.
This will set a trend for similar deals that will also exclude the US dollar, inevitably lowering its standing as the world’s reserve currency. I expect more such deals to be done with the Russians by German companies in particular as the sanctions fail to bring the promised results and as a consequence start to fall apart.
But it gets worse.
Before any of the US Senators or Congressmen stand up and start to call names at the Brits or the Norwegians or the French for backtracking on sanctions, they would be better to take a look nearer home.
It now seems that American Companies are not paying attention to the sanctions either.
For example, ExxonMobil, America’s largest oil company, has continued drilling offshore in the Russian Arctic, also with Rozneft.
If the sanctions were anything more than a bit of public posturing by Obama, ExxonMobil shouldn’t (and wouldn’t) be doing any more work with the Russians in Russia. But using the excuse that it is environmentally safer to complete the well than to allow the Russians to do it alone, ExxonMobil got permission to continue.
No doubt the company will express its gratitude when the next round of electioneering fund raising comes along! (Gosh, I’m such a cynic!)
Now, if Obama and his advisers had thought for a moment about the consequences of sanctions, they would have realized that, in cases like this, companies such as ExxonMobile had not really got a choice. If they hadn’t continued to work with Rozneft, the Russian company would simply have gone ahead without them with a consequent dilution of ExxonMobile’s return if/when the well is a success.
In addition to that, if the Russian company did need other help you can be sure there would have been a Chinese energy company there ready and willing and eager to take up the slack.
Whilst Obama and his predecessors have been blundering around the world pissing off friend and foe alike, the strategy of the Russian President has been to cultivate new friends and thereby new markets and customers for his country’s vast energy reserves.
It has been a clever move.
Sanctions or not, game to Putin this time I think.
But, politicians being politicians, they cannot even have a mock war like a Cold War without the stench of hypocrisy attached to it.
For example, the United States blames Russia for interfering in the internal affairs of Ukraine, as indeed it is currently doing. But at the same time it attaches no blame to itself for also interfering in the Ukraine’s internal affairs, which it also did – in the process helping to create the mess we now see on our TV screens.
Now, not content with that, America has been coercing Europe to go along with it in imposing economic sanctions on Russia. And by and large Europe has meekly and unthinkingly followed the US lead.
It started with foodstuffs and freezing bank accounts and assets, which Putin has managed to shrug off without too much trouble.
Now they’ve upped the ante and imposed sanctions on Russia’s supply of energy which is it’s big wealth earner and which given time will no doubt hurt a bit. I say “a bit” because any long term shortfall in energy revenue from Europe will be more than made up for by energy hungry customers like China, India and the rest of Asia. China, for example, recently closed a $400 billion natural gas deal with the Russians.
As a matter of fact, with winter approaching, the sanction game may well end up hurting Europe a lot more that it does Russia.
You see, the thing is, the energy sanctions imposed by the US and Europe are on the sale of oil and gas. These are the things that Europe desperately needs, but are things on which America does not rely on Russia for at all.
Wait a minute, there’s that smell again.
Worse than that, the US did not invoke sanctions on the sale of Russian nuclear fuel, which America does rely on Russia for, since it just happens to power 10% of all American homes.
Now do you smell it?
At the moment it looks like this Cold War is going to get very cold in Europe and very expensive as the cost of heating increases with the shortfall in supplies.
Time to test your knowledge of a wide range of subjects including geography, history, politics, music, movies, sport… even space!
And a lot of muli-pointers to give you the chance of building up a good score.
As usual if you get stuct you can find the answers waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down below, but please NO cheating!
Enjoy and good luck.
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Q. 1: What side of the road do you drive on in Japan, is it on the right (like the USA) or on the left (like Britain)?
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Q. 2: Who won this year’s (2014) Gentlemans and Ladies Singles titles at the world famous Wimbledon Tennis Tournament in England? (A point for each correct answer and a bonus point if you get both correct.)
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Q. 3: What is the most distant human-made object from Earth?
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Q. 4: What is the automobile that began as a project between Swatch and Mercedes most commonly known as?
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Q. 5: In the days when countries took control of other nations and territories overseas they were called Empires. Which country at one time controlled the largest Empire in the world (in terms of land area)?
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Q. 6: There are twelve buttons on a touch tone phone. What two symbols bear no digits?
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Q. 7: In which branch of the armed forces did William Hitler, a nephew of Adolf Hitler, serve during World War II?
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Q. 8: One chocolate chip can give you enough energy to walk approximately how many feet?
a) 50 feet b) 100 feet c) 150 feet d) 200 feet
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Q. 9: Plus or minus ten, The Bahamas consists of approximately how many islands?
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Q. 10: How many ‘Terminator’ movies have there been to date (2014)? (Bonus points if you can name them and the year they were released.)
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Q. 11: Who were the magician duo, known for their magic with big cats, who became the most successful and best known entertainers in Las Vegas?
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Q. 12: How many US Presidents have been assassinated? (A bonus point for each that you can name and even more points if you know where the assassinations took place and the names of the assassins.)
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Q. 13: If you added the number of players in a basket ball team, the number of players in an American football team, the number of players in a soccer team and the number of players in a rugby union team, what would be the total?
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Q. 14: Famous as Bret Maverick and Jim Rockford, who was he?
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Q. 15: What is the collective name for the 26 self-governing districts into which Switzerland is divided?
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Q. 16: The month of August falls within which two Zodiac signs?
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Q. 17: What was the name of the unexpected hit TV series about an unlikely duo who cook methamphetamine?
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Q. 18: Who is the current Prime Minister of Israel?
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Q. 19: Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Limited is currently owned by whom?
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Q. 20: What song by the group Queen made it to number 1 in the British charts twice, in 1976 and 1991?
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ANSWERS
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Q. 1: What side of the road do you drive on in Japan, is it on the right (like the USA) or on the left (like Britain)?
A. 1: In Japan you must drive on the left side of the road.
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Q. 2: Who won this year’s (2014) Gentlemans and Ladies Singles titles at the world famous Wimbledon Tennis Tournament in England? (A point for each correct answer and a bonus point if you get both correct.)
A. 2: In the 2014 Wimbledon tennis tournament Novak Djokovic was the winner of the Gentlemen’s Singles and Petra Kvitova was the winner of the Ladies’ Singles.
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Q. 3: What is the most distant human-made object from Earth?
A. 3: The Voyager 1 spacecraft is the most distant human-made object from Earth.
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Q. 4: What is the automobile that began as a project between Swatch and Mercedes most commonly known as?
A. 4: It is called the “SMART car”, an abbreviation of its original code name, the Swatch & Mercedes Art Car.
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Q. 5: In the days when countries took control of other nations and territories overseas they were called Empires. Which country at one time controlled the largest Empire in the world (in terms of land area)?
A. 5: Britain, whose Empire at one stage was 33.2 million km2 (approximately 8.2 billion acres).
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Q. 6: There are twelve buttons on a touch tone phone. What two symbols bear no digits?
A. 6: The star * and the hash # buttons have no digits.
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Q. 7: In which branch of the armed forces did William Hitler, a nephew of Adolf Hitler, serve during World War II?
A. 7: Adolf Hitler’s nephew, William, served in the Navy during WWII – the U.S. Navy!
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Q. 8: One chocolate chip can give you enough energy to walk approximately how many feet?
a) 50 feet b) 100 feet c) 150 feet d) 200 feet
A. 8: The correct answer is c) 150 feet.
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Q. 9: Plus or minus ten, The Bahamas consists of approximately how many islands?
A. 9: The Bahamas consists of approximately 501 islands, give yourself a point if you said anything between 491 to 511.
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Q. 10: How many ‘Terminator’ movies have there been to date (2014)? (Bonus points if you can name them and the year they were released.)
A. 10: There have been four ‘Terminator’ movies to date (2014); they are ‘The Terminator’ (1984); ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’ (1991); ‘Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines’ (2003); and, ‘Terminator Salvation’ (2009). A fifth Terminator movie is in post production scheduled for release in 2015.
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Q. 11: Who were the magician duo, known for their magic with big cats, who became the most successful and best known entertainers in Las Vegas?
A. 11: Siegfried and Roy.
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Q. 12: How many US Presidents have been assassinated? (A bonus point for each that you can name and even more points if you know where the assassinations took place and the names of the assassins.)
A. 12: Four US Presidents have been assassinated: Abraham Lincoln, in Washington, D.C., on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, by John Wilkes Booth; James A. Garfield, also in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, July 2, 1881, by Charles J. Guiteau; William McKinley, in Buffalo, New York, on Friday, September 6, 1901, by Leon Czolgosz; and John F. Kennedy, in Dallas, Texas, on Friday, November 22, 1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald.
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Q. 13: If you added the number of players in a basket ball team, the number of players in an American football team, the number of players in a soccer team and the number of players in a rugby union team, what would be the total?
A. 13: The answer is 42 (5 + 11 + 11 + 15).
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Q. 14: Famous as Bret Maverick and Jim Rockford, who was he?
A. 14: He was James Garner, who sadly passed away on July 19, 2014.
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Q. 15: What is the collective name for the 26 self-governing districts into which Switzerland is divided?
A. 15: They are called ‘Cantons’.
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Q. 16: The month of August falls within which two Zodiac signs?
A. 16: The zodiac signs for the month of August are Leo (until August 22) and Virgo (from August 23 onwards).
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Q. 17: What was the name of the unexpected hit TV series about an unlikely duo who cook methamphetamine?
A. 17: Breaking Bad.The show originally aired on the AMC network for five seasons, from January 20, 2008 to September 29, 2013.
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Q. 18: Who is the current Prime Minister of Israel?
A. 18: Benjamin Netanyahu. (No points deducted if you get the spelling wrong.)
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Q. 19: Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Limited is currently owned by whom?
A. 19: Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of BMW AG.
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Q. 20: What song by the group Queen made it to number 1 in the British charts twice, in 1976 and 1991?
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