JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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- Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) in Kanto region
- RCS (RCSコーポレーション), Kanto
- Salary: ¥180,000 ~ ¥250,000 / Month includes performance bonus
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- Assistant Language Teacher - TOKYO - late-March start
- Interac, Tokyo
- Salary: ¥230,000 ~ ¥255,000 / Month
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- Assistant Language Teacher - Kanagawa Prefecture - late-March start
- Interac, Kanagawa
- Salary: ¥230,000 ~ ¥255,000 / Month
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Wolfpack
Where I live got socked by who knows how many of these tornadoes. Driving around town I saw several areas fairly close together that were badly damaged. I assume that it was the same tornado that hit each place but I don't know for sure. Although I had heard that there were some pretty bad storms coming our way, no one expected them to be this bad. We are used to tornadoes and hurricanes around here but these were particularly bad because so many hit populated areas. My bosses car was totaled and his house was damaged - but not too badly.
I wouldn't say that it has been hotter than usual for this time of year. The weather has been nice - not too hot but not all that cold either. As for global warming you can go ahead and knock that off. Even the promoters of climate change theory will tell you that localized weather events are not proof that the entire globe is being overheated by man.
Posted in: 62 tornadoes leave at least 45 dead in six U.S. states
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Wolfpack
The Boston Marathon was dynamite this year. Along with the Japanese sweep of the men's and women's wheelchair races, the top man ran a little over two hours and three minutes - wind aided. Astounding!
Posted in: Winners
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Wolfpack
Except you simply have a lack of understanding about how a retirement system should work. Medicare and Medicaid are government insurance programs. Social Security is a retirement system.
Even if you run SS like an insurance program instead of a retirement program it is still a complete mess. I seriously doubt that the Federal government would allow any private insurance company to operate the way that Social Security does. Private companies must be able to pay insurance claims and therefore must have a certain amount of money saved and readily available to pay such claims. Social Security is pay as you go. The money that has been paid into the "insurance" system has been spent by the government - it hasn't been saved. It can only get that money back by redeeming the paper with the Treasury. Where does the Treasury get that money from? Well, it doesn't have it saved somewhere - it was given to federal agencies and has been spent. It must be retrieved from the general revenues accrued through taxation. Where will that money come from? It comes from future generations who are saddled with the debt of past generations on a massive scale.
You talk about actuarial tables but apparently the people who set up and later tinkered with the program over the years never bothered to look at them. Since this is now a pay as you go system - because the accumulated wealth in the system has been spent and the interest forgone - there will soon be two people for every beneficiary. Not much of an insurance system is it...
Posted in: Obama says Republican budget 'wrong for America'
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Wolfpack
Some people don't deserve a vote to impose their personal ideology on others who do not share their way of thinking. You should know better than to state something like this - there was a time when people thought that blacks didn't deserve to vote either...
If you want to blow your money on some socialist plan to save the world go ahead. Get as many people together as you can and pool your money together and go for it. But don't use the power of government to impose it on everyone else. I guess choice is only for abortions.
"government is best which governs least"
Posted in: House passes huge GOP budget cuts, opposing Obama
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Wolfpack
@yabits:
Senator Sanders is indeed a Socialist and has therefore quite naturally aligned himself with the Democrat party. There are many in the Democrat party who believe the exact same things that Sanders does but do not call themselves Socialist because it would make it harder for them to get elected. And Socialism, like Liberalism, has a bad name that they would prefer to keep at arms length. I think that if President Obama, Minority Leader Pelosi, and others like Rep. Frank, Maxine Waters, and Henry Waxman were comfortable facing the electorate calling themselves Socialists they would - becaue that is what they are. Why do you think President Obama goes to such lengths to disassociate himself with the word 'Socialist' even though he believes in using the government to redistribute the wealth of American citizens and whose proudest acheivement is a collectivist reorganization of the American Health Care system.
Socialism is a failed political and economic ideology that people who cannot understand human nature continue to try and make work no matter how many times it fails. The Democrat party relies on government coercion to implement their domestic policy agenda. That is "wrong for America". It is wrong to treat people as servants of government and not as individuals with their own hopes and dreams. If Liberals - or should I say 'Progressives' - want socialist policies they should pursue their ideology outside of government coercion.
Posted in: Obama says Republican budget 'wrong for America'
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Wolfpack
@Laguna:
No, Reagan and Tip O'Neil did not "lie", they merely prolonged the inevitable. Social Security is it's current incarnation is a pay-as-you go ponzi scheme not much different from what Bernie Madoff had going. There is a lot of wealth on paper, but no actual money to back it up. IOU's are not wealth, it is merely a liability that our children and grandchildren will have to pay so we can live now. It's immoral and unsustainable. As the average age of citizens increases, it becomes ever more unsustainable.
And government do-gooders and socialism kills real people. How does Medicaid and Medicare help when physicians will not take them as patients because the government will not reimburse them for the full amount of the services provided? Socialism has killed more people over the last century than any other wayward ideology. How can people live longer and more healthier lives as the nation itself gets poorer and poorer due to government mismanagement?
Posted in: Obama says Republican budget 'wrong for America'
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Wolfpack
@YongYang:
Like any good little feminist, Hillary will always stand by her man no matter what they do.
Hillary sure has aged a lot in the last few years - must be in about her mid-60's or so now. The constant travel of a Secretary of State hasn't been kind to her.
Posted in: Hi Hillary
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Wolfpack
@Laguna:
The reason the US is in the middle of a fiscal emergency is because of the type of society that has been built over the past 80 years. Socialism is unsustainable over the long term - there are dozens of examples of this over the past 100 years from across the globe and across a large swath of races and cultures. Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security are not sustainable as government programs. The tipping point for each of these programs is quickly approaching. Simply raising taxes to pay ever more for fundamentally flawed systems is a dead-end.
The 'Grapes of Wrath' analogy is particularly apt in the case of these programs. They are sapping the financial resources of the nation making everyone poorer by the day. It is better to begin moving these programs to the private sector now rather than later when they will consume 100% of the governments budget. Budget deficits of $1.5 trillion a year is not sustainable for very long.
President Obama is already the worst president in American history and his first term is barely half over. He is bankrupting America and his budget for the coming year - both the initial one and the one he rushed out after Rep. Ryan's budget came out - contain huge budget deficits like no nation has ever seen for as far as the eye can see. Even Ryan's budget - which Liberals consider to be draconian - does not lead to a balanced budget. But at least it goes in the right direction.
Obama believes that Socialism (ie. collectivism) is what America is all about and to oppose it is un-American. Of course, that is exactly backwards from the American founding tradition of individualism. Although he is American - his ideas are not.
Posted in: Obama says Republican budget 'wrong for America'
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Wolfpack
More than 20 people were killed in North Carolina. Tornado's caused destruction from the midwest all the way through the south. Good riddance to this storm.
Posted in: Spring storms kill 25 in 6 U.S. states
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Wolfpack
It looks as though the Empress is trying to keep Hillary from grabbing her. The Secretary of State is getting a little too intimate and touchy given that I doubt the two have met more than a few times in their lives.
Posted in: Hi Hillary
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Wolfpack
President Obama has no interest in reducing the annual deficit or the accumulated national debt - unless it threatens his re-election of course. I expect that he will make all of the noises of someone who cares about the nations financial future. However, once he gets re-elected he will shift back into spending mode. Socialists think money grows on trees and that the private sector exists only to fund government programs in which everyone is made dependent upon. He knows no other way.
This is a total ruse on Obama's part. I don't expect that he will submit a plan to get the nation out of debt.
Posted in: Obama to lay out spending plan
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Wolfpack
It's understandable that there would be a reaction against nuclear power given the circumstances. However, Japan has few if any options other than nuclear. You could put wind mills and solar panels all over the country and it wouldn't be as viable a solution as nuclear power. The only other option is to become even more dependent upon oil imports. But then there is the "global warming" scaremongering that has been ingrained into the Japanese as if it were a computer program implanted into their heads at birth. The Fukushima nuclear plants problems puts the entire country in a pretty tough spot.
Posted in: Anti-nuke
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Wolfpack
Just because Planned Parenthood has two sets of books doesn't mean that the Federal money that goes into the non-abortion ledger doesn't affect the flow of money within the organization. The Hyde Amendment is just a gimmick - it doesn't restrict what services PP provides to women whether it be abortions or cervical cancer screening. I think that the Federal money donated to PP comes to about a third or a quarter of their over one billion dollar annual budget. Like any business, they project spending for the coming year and allocate their funds accordingly. Fortunately for them, they get enough non-Federal money that they can apply money that they raise to cover all abortion expenses. This is still substantial since they are the nations largest abortion provider - it's their reason for being.
Like others here, I don't think the government should force a large number of American's to subsidize an organization that does something that they believe is terribly immoral. First of all, we can't afford it. Furthermore, if an unborn child has a heartbeat and/or brain function then aborting him or her is a pretty horrible thing to do. To me ending the life of a living child - born or unborn - is like treating the child as if it were property and not a living being. Fetuses aren't tadpoles - they are people. And don't give me this kept your hands off women's body stuff - presumably half of the babies aborted are males. Try keeping your hands off their body's instead!
Posted in: Last-minute deal reached to avoid U.S. government shutdown
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Wolfpack
This has got to be one of the most biased articles that I've read on JT in a long while. President Obama and the Dems didn't want any cuts at all. Republicans kept upping the ante and Senator Reid could never move the debate in his direction. Speaker Boehner got everything that he wanted and got the vast majority of his members in Congress on board with him. As for President Obama, he was invisible until the very end. He then swoops in just to hand Boehner the ball game.
This article misses the point. The Republicans want to stop the obscene Federal spending. They threw in the controversial social issues at the end as misdirection causing the Liberals to waste all of their time making outrageous statements about how the Republicans want to "kill women" - Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY). The Dems feel good about themselves because they are able to say that they saved the day for Planned Parenthood so they can continue to (indirectly) pay for abortions. President Obama was hilarious in his news conference. He comes out claiming that this was an "historic agreement" when he gave everything and got nothing in return. It is funny to see the Dems get rolled and then act like they came out on top!
Posted in: Obama, Boehner each score points in budget pact
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Wolfpack
The numbers on abortion support are not as simplistic as 57% pro-abortion and 42% anti-abortion. Add in partial birth abortion, and other factors and the numbers are less supportive. Even those who support abortion are reticent about aborting a child that has a heart beat and/or brain activity.
That said, this isn't just about abortion or cutting off the paychecks for service members. However, with the size of the annual deficit that the US government is under right now, these should be easy cuts to make. George Soros and the uber rich in Hollywood and Manhatten can easily support Planned Parenthood and all of the things they do. The military on the other hand is a core federal government function.
These cuts are small in the grand scheme of things, but are symbolic of the spending insanity that has become so ingrained in Congress. A financial catastrophe is staring the United States square in the eyes and the politicians can't get their stuff together. It's pathetic.
Posted in: Last-minute deal reached to avoid U.S. government shutdown
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Wolfpack
How can there even be a negotiation when the Senate hasn't even passed a budget to negotiate over! Oh, and it was supposed to be done last year. The House is negotiating with itself and Senator Reid is just sitting around doing nothing. For goodness sake pass something and get on with it already!
Posted in: Shutdown talks yield no deal in U.S. as clock ticks
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Wolfpack
It appears that radiation exposure causes stray dogs to group themselves by breed and color.
ogtob syas:
I don't know who let them out, but someone needs to go back in there and take care of these dogs. Maybe the photographer can take a few with him on his way out of town.
Posted in: Dog days
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Wolfpack
It is just plain ridiculous that the US government could be shutdown when the Democrat party had control of both houses of Congress last year and could have had just about whatever they wanted. Senator Reid should quit whining about the Republicans cutting too much when he failed to get the job done when his party controlled the entire process. This should have been taken care of long ago. Although the newly installed Republican House majority have taken up the leftover work for their chamber and passed a 2011 budget, the Democrats still have not done the same in the Senate. Until they pass something, a shutdown is inevitable.
As for President Obama he is doing what he always does, he leaves everything up to Congress so he will not get the blame if something gets through that is later considered to be unpopular. A leader he is not!
Posted in: Obama presses Congress to avoid shutdown over budget
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Wolfpack
I wonder how long it will take the French to convince Obama to start bombing in the Ivory Coast in order to protect civilians from a humanitarian crisis.
Posted in: Ivory Coast strongman says he's not stepping down
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Wolfpack
I don't think it was hard for the reporter who wrote this story to find people to supply "newsworthy" quotes for this article. Travel to any city in any country and you can easily find a few idiots to say something ignorant about something they know anything about. It's as if the person who wrote this story had to submit something - anything - to their editor and just pulled this idea out of thin air to write about.
Posted in: Japan's disaster becoming contagious abroad