On a lighter note…

Wow! A Quadrillion-Dollar Credit Card Bill

A North Texas man has a 17-figure credit card statement after a bank glitch resulted in an eye-popping charge.

A banking glitch turned a charge from Five Sixty by Wolfgang Puck into a whopping 17-figure credit card charge.

This is what it looks like: $23,148,855,308,184,500.00.

I wonder what the minimum payment would be?

OPEN THREAD!

Tidbits

Found around the InterWebs:

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HillllaaaaaaREEEEEEE Giving Major Foreign Policy Speech Today!

Clinton’s spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters today that the Secretary of State plans to outline “her vision” of U.S. foreign policy, as well as how the State Department plans to carry out the overall Obama foreign policy agenda.

Kelly described the speech as having a “global perspective” that will “mostly be forward looking.” She is expected to hit on all the world’s hot spots — “the whole gamut,” he said.

A senior State Department official says the speech has been in the works for about six weeks, and Clinton aides have long wanted to do a speech to mark the first six months of her term as Secretary of State.

“Now that most of her team is in place, it’s time for us to look forward and sort of lay out the big picture for our implementing the administration’s foreign policy,” the official said.

Her speech started at 1 pm today. Anyone watching on CSpan?

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Dear Michael Bloomberg:  Please STFU

Bloomy Slams Hillary for State Department Decision

Bloomy Testifies for Sotomayor

Really, does anyone care what this guy has to say?

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House, Senate Take on Health Care

House Democrats announced a plan yesterday that would force the richest 2 million U.S. taxpayers to shoulder much of the cost of an expansion of the nation’s health-care system, by imposing a surtax of as much as 5.4 percent on income above $350,000 a year.

The House proposal aims to extend insurance coverage to 37 million Americans over the next decade, covering more people through Medicaid and providing subsidies to help others meet a new federal mandate to purchase insurance. Democratic aides said the proposal would cost more than $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years, and would ensure that 97 percent of Americans were enrolled in a health plan by 2015.

About half of the cost would be covered by reducing spending on federal health programs, primarily Medicare, which serves the elderly and the disabled. But much of the rest of the money would come from a new tax on families earning more than $350,000 a year and individuals earning more than $280,000. The taxes, which would take effect in 2011, would affect about 2.1 million taxpayers, the nonprofit Tax Policy Center projected.

The surtax would start at 1 percent and rise to 5.4 percent on income exceeding $1 million. Combined with the expiration next year of tax cuts enacted during the Bush administration, the surtax would drive the top federal tax rate to 45 percent, the highest level since lawmakers rewrote the tax code in 1986.

House leaders defended the plan by saying it targets those most able to pay — the wealthiest 1.2 percent of households — while honoring President Obama’s pledge to protect the middle class from higher taxes.

(snip)

Senate negotiators have all but abandoned plans to directly tax the wealthy and are focusing instead on an array of smaller, more narrowly targeted revenue measures that would raise money from drug and insurance companies, as well as individuals and corporations. A tax on employer-provided health benefits remains part of that discussion, but Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who is promoting a tax on the most generous 1 percent of private plans, conceded yesterday that such a proposal is “a very tough sell.”

Oh heavens, the House wants to tax the wealthy and the Senate doesn’t. Quelle surprise!

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What Is Our Eleven-Dimensional-Chess-Playing Philosopher King President Waiting For?

Unemployment is rising. Foreclosures are surging. Lending is still constrained. So why exactly is the Obama administration waiting to act?

I dunno. Do the words “He doesn’t give a flying fadoodle” mean anything to ya?

OPEN THREAD

Morning Widdershins: TERM LIMITS PLEASE!

While watching the Sotomayor hearings it suddenly occurred to me that I am basically looking at some of the same faces that were evident 18 years ago when Clarence Thomas went up to the Hill during his nomination process. Isn’t that the same Orrin Hatch, Arlen Specter, and Pat Leahy who were a part of that circus when I was some 20 lbs lighter and the gray had yet to make an appearance on my head?    If memory serves, I was still helping my kids with their homework.

Al Franken has been slotted to take the seat of Ted Kennedy who would also have been on the panel had he not taken ill last year. So that would have made 4 of the recurring cast of returnees who, maybe a little grayer and paunchier themselves, are still going strong.  Biden would have been there had he not become VP so at least we have been spared somewhat.  Some things change  only when they don’t.

Teddy is out of commission due to some very serious health issues. Robert Byrd, a man in his 90’s, seems to have the local ER on speed dial owing to his advanced years and declining health. Their physical ailments have left their treasured seats vacant for the better part of a year and the prognosis does not appear favorable. Yet they strongly cling to their Senate seats throughout.

I am not making light of their ailments, but isn’t time to for them to step aside on behalf of their constituents at least? Strom Thurmond at 100 years of age and depending upon aides to push his wheelchair onto the floor of the Senate, who gave every indication that he had no idea what was going on, was a perfect example of not knowing when to call it quits. I hold the voters of South Carolina wholly responsible for his return year after year when it became apparent that he no longer had a grasp on the issues, but whose presence guaranteed a vote in the Repub column each time a bill came up for consideration.   Craven.

We are only allowed to vote for those in our own states and districts who will represent us. We can scream, holler, and voice outrage over those congress critters who drive us to distraction. I have no control over who represents the state of Iowa than they do in representing mine. But in the end we continue to send the same impotent representatives back to DC again and again and again. And if the current cauldron of the mess we are now swimming in is not enough to demand term limits, then I don’t know what does. Some of these stalwarts are members of the same groups who have taken us to the ledge and have been doing so for years. Their entire careers are based on re-election.

We desperately need term limits. Fresh voices possibly with new ideas who would come to the congress with the concerns and interests of the nation as the paramount reason to hold office. Instead we get another round of the same idiots each taking potshots at one another year after while little of the nation’s business is solved. Almost 20 years after the first attempt to reform healthcare we are still in a pitched battle to carry it through. Twenty freaken’ years!

The only difference I see is who gets to “chair” a committee depending on which party happens to have the majority lead. Other than that, the same faces take turns filling those seats like a game of Musical Chairs. Campaign finance reform is a joke if not equally attached to term limits. The money gathered by these careerists for the next election has all the earmarks of corruption pouring from its coffers.

I know my theory is never going to happen. Just wishful thinking that possibly 10 years from now when another confirmation hearing is underway the same faces, a lot older but less wiser, won’t be staring back at me. I’m filing this one in my very own “Bucket List”.