Category Archives: Politics & News

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

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.

 

Turning Out the Lights

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My old friend “Swampy” has been visiting for a couple of weeks. Don Swamtek loves Spring skiing and, despite the above average temperatures here the past 45 days (we annihilated the record high, bumping it by 6̊  to 66̊ on Friday), there is 3 inches of new snow in the mountains. Jay Peak has a 26 – 40 inch base and Stowe has 32 – 56 inches.

“I really like this Global Weirding stuff,” he said after a run at Jay last week. He was wearing lederhosen at the time, although he also had on heavy wool socks.

In real life, Swampy is a nuclear engineer with one of the few remaining Fortune 500 manufacturers. He spends his days dreaming about building a new plant in his own country and his nights star gazing. I don’t know why so many of my friends are hooked on the night sky, but they all surely do like it dark.

“We haven’t built a new nuclear plant in the U.S. in more than 30 years,” Swampy said, “but nuclear power still creates almost a fifth of the electricity we use.” Output was 809 billion kWh in 2008. “It may provide only 20 percent of our nation’s electricity but that is 70 percent — more than two-thirds — of our carbon-free, pollution-free electricity.”

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy and Polish power company Polska Grupa Energetyczna will collaborate to build Poland’s two new next-generation commercial nuclear power plants. Poland currently relies heavily on coal-fired production. That country needs the nukes to help diversify its energy production, especially since plants like the ones they plan would avoid annual emissions equivalent to approximately 1.3 million cars. Poland is surrounded by at least 26 nuclear reactors operating in its neighboring lands.

Meanwhile, South Korea has won contracts to design and build a nuclear research reactor in Jordan as well as at least four nuclear power plants in the United Arab Emirates. The South Korean team beat off France and an American-Japanese power consortium in the bidding competition.

Swampy surprises a lot of people because he is an environmentalist. He cools his house with natural convection and fans instead of air conditioning. He heats it with wood. He hangs some of his clothes to dry and uses an Energy*Star appliance for the rest. He has a solar water heater. He and I designed an electric car in the 70s. More important, he haunts garage sales (on his bike) rather than buying new. He repairs and reuses everything, although he refuses to wash out and reuse freezer bags (yes, I do that).

On the other hand, he is improbably cheerful about his environmental message. “I’m not doom-and-gloom enough to get people to make me their Messiah.” That doesn’t stop him from reminding us of the truth.

“Doesn’t matter if you believe people cause global warming or even if there is global warming,” he said. “That argument is sort of irrelevant.

“Oil was $150 per barrel just last year and there’s no reason to think this administration — or the Far Green — will do anything but try to jack the price even more. Even if affordability doesn’t bother you, we’re not making any more dinosaurs. Making electricity we can afford to use right now. That has to be the focus for alternate energy policy. Everything else you say is a distraction.

“If we don’t fix this, we’re gonna turn out our lights. For good.”

So, I have to wonder. With all that brainpower, with all that education, with all that belief in conservation, why can’t I get him to turn out the lights when he leaves a room?