Author Archives: Dick

Uphill. Both Ways.

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Do you remember where you were 40 years ago today? Jim Lovell and Fred Haise certainly do.

You kids today, you just don’t know how easy you’ve got it!

40 years ago, Mr. Lovell and Mr. Haise would have given their eye teeth for an iPad. They had two computers but they had to write down data on a scrap of paper from one computer then retype it into the other. Mr. Lovell even had to do arithmetic on paper to make sure he converted the data so it would work in the second computer. There wasn’t even any email! They had to write letters. With pens. There was no Sony Playstation with high-res 3-D graphics. There was not even an Atari 2600 with Space Invaders or Asteroids. Those games got faster and faster until you died.

As an aside, the iPad, the Playstation, the Atari, the computer that runs your Toyota, and your microwave oven all came out of space program engineering.

Apollo 13 launched on April 11, 1970, 40 years ago yesterday, at 13:13 hours CST. That third Apollo mission was expected to land on the Moon, but an unplanned event forced an ABEND to the mission. And gave us a new phrase that bridged the generations.

“Houston, we’ve had a problem.”

Jack Swigert, the man who announced the problem to the world, died of bone cancer in 1982, one of only 24 people ever to have flown to the Moon. Ever. Mr. Lovell and Mr. Haise are two of the 24.

There have been 131 manned U.S. missions into space including Shuttle Discovery, in space now to deliver a logistics module to the International Space Station as well as three spacewalks.

President Obama has killed the shuttle program. STS-131 is the fourth from the last shuttle mission. Ever.

President Obama has killed Project Constellation. That $108 billion program to develop the next generation of rockets and space vehicles is dead.

President Obama has no plan to build any new rocket capable of carrying men into space. Manned space travel will be outsourced just as tech support and kids’ toys and the shirt on your back has been. “We’ll just let the Russians or Chinese do that for us.” NASA will no longer be able to dream about flying astronauts beyond Earth orbit. NASA will no longer be able to dream.

Since those heady days 40 years ago, no man has had to walk twenty-five miles to school every morning, uphill, barefoot. Both ways. And according to this president’s plan no American man ever will again.

Great Britain, a country entirely surrounded by water, stopped being a seafaring nation when George V stopped sending brave men in ships to the sea.

America stopped being a great spacefaring nation when Barack Obama stopped sending brave men in ships into space.

We didn’t, either country, go down in a great battle. We whimpered out of the room without a fight.

Only the Best F@%king News

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Knowing that no sinner is ever saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon, I shall be mercifully brief.

Calling your debate opponent a fuckwit shows two things: the caller has none of the latter and has no facts to argue.

My friend Rufus got sucked into one of the long running Internet arguments about something-or-other political. Doesn’t matter what.

Rufus has some faults. One is his belief that opinion laced with some facts is news. I know better than that. I write opinion laced with fact. I may be a journalist but I don’t write news. I may even break a story now and then but I don’t write news. On the broadcast front, Glenn Beck does opinion laced with some facts but he doesn’t do news. Jon Stewart does comedy laced with some facts but he doesn’t do news.

Rufus can be a little long winded at times. Rufus ‘splains everything. In detail. With supporting evidence. And twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was. He believes facts win debates.

He was ‘splainin’ stuff pretty well in this Internet debate until he dropped this bombshell at the beginning of a post: “If you listened to what Glen Beck actually SAID instead of just freaking out over him, you would understand that …”

Heh.

You know what comes next, don’t you?

Me, too. Replicator-827 answered with civility and aplomb, “I don’t listen to ANYTHING that asshole says, and if YOU do, that says all I need to know about you.”

DING DING DING.

Round over. You lose. Thanks for playing. Please visit our consolation prize department. It’s right behind that door marked “Egress.”

Of course, on his way out the door, the other great debater, the person who included the epithets Charlie Daniels, Cletus, “forced-birther,” invisible sky fairy, NASCAR, and “white trash,” turned around to say, “Do the world a favor and kill yourself.”

[plonk]

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.
–Mark Twain

About HR3590 et al

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Dear Congress Critter:

Every piece of the ObamaCare you approved limits inputs (except the revenue sections which raise inputs).

No part of the ObamaCare you approved defines outcomes.

The President’s approval rating has dropped 25 points in the year you have argued over this bull, five of those points in the week since you passed his “crowning achievement.” Congress’ approval numbers are the lowest ever.

Take a lesson.

Here in the real world, we have to set a budget we can’t exceed and figure out how to get the outcome we want with what we have. You are on your way to rejoining the real world. I most humbly request that you repeal ObamaCare before you get there.

Sincerely, yr. humble servant,
We the OverTaxed People

Rum and Kook a COLA

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There is no inflation. The Cost of Living hasn’t risen for several quarters.

Cost of living is by definition the cost of maintaining a certain standard of living.

Employment contracts, pension benefits, and government payments such as your Social Security check can be tied to a cost-of-living index, typically to the CPI or “Consumer Price Index.”

The CPI reports the average price of a lot of stuff — what is called a constant “market basket of goods and services” — purchased by average households. According to Bloomberg Business News, the CPI wonks add up and average the prices of 95,000 items from 22,000 stores and 35,000 rental units. Those prices are weighted by assuming that you distribute your spending along strict percentages. Housing: 41.4%, Food and Beverage: 17.4%, Transport: 17.0%, Medical Care: 6.9%, Other: 6.9%, Apparel: 6.0%, and Entertainment: 4.4%. Taxes are exempt from the CPI totals so when your property tax or sales tax or income tax or Cadillac health care tax or gasoline tax or telecommunications tax or blue cheese tax rises, it doesn’t actually cost you any extra.

In calculating the CPI, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics uses a formula that reflects the fact that consumers shift their purchases toward products that have fallen in relative price. Although this substitution game means the BLS reduces what we pay by “living with” store brands instead of name brands, BLS says my analysis is incorrect. Their objective “is to calculate the change in the amount consumers need to spend to maintain a constant level of satisfaction.” As long as the BLS gets to define “satisfaction.”

Where, oh where is Mick when we need him?

The Social Security Administration writes, “Since 1975, Social Security’s general benefit increases have been based on increases in the cost of living, as measured by the Consumer Price Index. We call such increases Cost-Of-Living Adjustments, or COLAs. Because there has been a decline in the Consumer Price Index, there will be no COLA payable in 2010.”

  • Campbell’s Cream of Tomato soup costs between 80 cents and $1 per can in most markets today. Do you remember when it was 40 cents? I do. But the Cost of Living has declined.
  • A five-pound bag of flour costs about $2.49 in most markets today. Do you remember when it was a buck? I do. But the Cost of Living has declined.
  • Gasoline costs between $3.50 and $4 per gallon in most markets. Do you remember when it was $0.999? I do. But the Cost of Living has declined.
  • According to USAToday, health insurance premiums cost about $13,375 per annum last year. (And despite the new law, insurers say they do not have to cover kids with pre-existing conditions.) Do you remember when a family policy cost $2,500? I do. But your premiums will still go up. And, of course, the Cost of Living has declined.
  • Milk costs between $3.50 and $4 per gallon in most markets. Do you remember when it was $1.75? I do. But the Cost of Living has declined.

I wish stuff didn’t cost so much but even more I wish our “leaders” didn’t lie to us about stuff costing so much. Oddly, I cannot vote myself a raise.

The Perfect Storm

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President Barack Obama signed the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” into law yesterday. They drank champagne at the White House and Kool-Aid around the blue states.

This combination of tax and mandate is the most significant regulatory remodeling of the U.S. healthcare system since Medicare and Medicaid passed Congress in 1965.

Conservatives should hate Obamacare because it will eventually raise taxes by Two Trillion-with-a-T dollars.
Libertarians should hate Obamacare because it immediately expands the size of government.
Liberals should hate Obamacare because it will double the size and scope of the insurance companies they blame entirely for the health care crisis.

My advice? Buy stock in Unitedhealth Group (UNH, trading at $21.08/sh) and Wellpoint (WLP, trading at $36.42/sh).

Mr. Obama has made an interesting progression. In 2009, he stole what was once the largest corporation in the world and gave it to his political cronies. In 2010, he stole what is the largest health care system in the world and gave it to the insurance companies. In 2011, it appears he will steal the largest democracy in the world and give it to our (“former”) enemies.

And you thought The Perfect Storm was just a movie.