Some Things You Just Can’t Make Up
Category Archives: What? Are They Nuts?
And the Hits Just Keep on Coming…
Two more not so affordable parts of the Unaffordable Health Care Act:
1. You don’t qualify for a subsidy if your income is less than 100% of the Federal Poverty Level.
2. Likewise you don’t get a subsidy if your filing status is “married filing separately.” If you’re married, your tax filing status must be “married filing jointly” in order to qualify for a subsidy.
“So, the poor folk this is designed to cover can’t afford it?”
$11,490. That’s the 2013 Federal Poverty Guideline for one individual living anywhere in the 48 Contiguous States and the District of Columbia.
$11,491. That’s the minimum one individual living anywhere in the 48 Contiguous States and the District of Columbia can earn to qualify for an Obamacare subsidy
25,273,000. That’s the number of individuals living anywhere in the 48 Contiguous States and the District of Columbia who earn less than $11,490.
25,273,000. That’s the number of individuals living anywhere in the 48 Contiguous States and the District of Columbia who don’t qualify for Obamacare premium tax credits or cost-sharing subsidies.
That’s right, Pookie, if you are the poorest of the poor, you don’t get premium tax credits or cost-sharing subsidies. [Note to those who are counting, some but not all of those 25,273,000 do qualify for Medicaid.]
“And if you and your spouse don’t live together, you’re basically screwed.”
About 2,408,000 people filed separate returns in 2009, the most recent year the IRS has published. About 1,811,779 (One million, eight hundred eleven thousand, seven hundred seventy-nine) of those reported less that $49,960 in income, the cut-off for individual subsidies. One point eight million people left out by the Unaffordable Care Act.
Well, Pookie, you might not be getting screwed but, yeah, you are.
If you support Obamacare, this is what your crutch hath wrought.
Change Is Good
If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.
Lao Tzu
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
Winston Churchill
Leave my phone machine by the radar range
Hello, it’s me, I’m not at home
If you’d like to reach me then leave me alone.“
On a much smaller scale, I had occasion to back a pickup truck onto a trailer tongue the other day. I’ve always preferred to do that as a two-person job, one driving the truck and Rufus making obscure hand gestures whilst standing on the tongue. The truck I used had an optional backup camera with video that swivels and points and even has range lines to guide you on far better than watching the expressions on Rufus’ face. Change is good.
Once upon a time, I wished for a (convenient) VCR for radio. See I liked to listen to Car Talk but it aired on Saturday mornings and I was often interrupted by a dump run, so I missed many of those episodes. Change is good. In 1993, Carl Malamud launched his Internet Talk Radio as the “first computer-radio talk show.” Computer users could download his audio files each week and listen at their convenience. Today I can choose from more than 115,000 English-language podcasts including reruns of Car Talk.
Change is good. Except when it isn’t.
My crew chief (not Rufus) munged the Camaro shift linkage one fine summer day and sent me out on the track with 1st gear down and to the right where 4th gear should be, 2nd in place of 3rd, but 3rd up there where 1st should be, and 4th next to 1st taking the proper 2nd slot (this was loooooong before paddle shifters). Just try going up through those gears and back down again at full chat with a horde of other pony cars around you.
“You’re the driver,” my crew chief said. “You’re supposed to be able to adapt to these little changes.”
Um, no. I have better things to do than try to learn a new shift pattern at 160 mph.
I got a new crew chief. That change bit him.
Another change. Firefox decided to redo all my taskbars this morning and tell me to upgrade from version 22 (released last month) to version 25 (released the other day). It was not a clean change. I had to rebuild some of the add-ons, fix the task and menu bars, and so on. And for whatever reason the page zoom is no longer “sticky.” Page magnification used to be sticky. In addition to the UI issues, it has also fried all my protected cookies, the tab options, and some other stuff I probably haven’t found yet. Gmail, Facebook, Pandora, my credit card site, and a couple of others all thought I was logging in from a new computer. It loaded my home button page because it no longer differentiates between that and the home page and TVGuide thinks I’m in Fargo, ND, despite the fact that Cookie Culler shows explicitly that I have my location, provider, and favorite channels set. This is one of the least satisfactory single app upgrades I’ve done yet.
I told Firefox that this version may be the worst browser ever, simply because I’m spending so much more time trying to fix it than browsing.
I have better things to do than try to learn a new shift pattern or new browser tricks when I’m already trying to figure out what Facebook has screwed up this week.
I got a new crew chief. I can get a new browser.
And I managed to get through this rant without once mentioning the guy who promised to turn our world upside down and ended up simply stealing our world.
It’s past time for a change there, too. Change is good.
Snapping Out
Starting today, We the Overtaxed People will give food stamp recipients less money each month because a “temporary” $5 billion stimulus has expired. Those funds, along with certain COBRA and ERRP benefits and more, came from the 2009 Recovery Act.
One in seven Americans, or about 47 million people, depend on SNAP (the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) to pay some or all of the cost of their groceries. The average beneficiary received $133.41 in food stamps per month last year.
“A family of four will lose $36 per month!” my retired newspaper editor buddy Lido “Lee” Bruhl said.
No.
That family of four simply had an extra $36 per month to spend for a little while. Kind of a windfall. My buddy Lee has always wanted to tax windfalls at 120%. Or more.
One wag wondered, “if obesity is the problem the left claims it is, then they should be happy.”
Heh. I do note that most food stamp recipients buy better cuts of meat than I do, but that’s not the right question.
The Food Stamp Act of 1964 appropriated $75 million to 350,000 individuals in 40 counties and three cities. By April of 1965, participation topped half a million. Participation topped 1 million in 1966, 2 million in 1967, 3 million in 1969, 4 million in February, 1970, 5 million one month later, 6 million two months later, 10 million in 1971, and 15 million in 1974. As of 2013, more than 15% of the entire U.S. population receives SNAP assistance. Washington D.C. gives SNAP to 23% of its population.
The $75 million Food Stamp Act of 1964 had grown to $78.4 billion and the 350,000 to 47 million in 2012.
The right question is, why do liberals think it’s better to enslave our population (47 million and growing and growing and growing) than it is to teach them to fish?
The New Godwin
Wikipedia tells us:
Godwin’s law (also known as Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies or Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies is an assertion made by Mike Godwin in 1990 that has become an Internet adage. It states: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” In other words, Godwin said that, given enough time, in any online discussion — regardless of topic or scope — someone inevitably makes a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis.
Although in one of its early forms Godwin’s law referred specifically to Usenet newsgroup discussions, the law is now often applied to any threaded online discussion, such as forums, chat rooms and blog comment threads, and has been invoked for the inappropriate use of Nazi analogies in articles or speeches. The law is sometimes invoked, as a rule, to mark the end of a discussion when a Nazi analogy is made, with the writer who made the analogy being considered to have lost the argument.
In 2012, “Godwin’s Law” became an entry in the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.
So there I was, dreaming about moving to Copenhagen with a hot chick, when someone interrupted my fantasy to talk about ObamaCare. As an expert on the subject, I weighed in with a carefully thought out and crafted argument.
“ObamaCare sucks,” I wrote. I backed that up with facts and figures drawn from the NYTimes, the Washington Post, and Reuters as well as my own calculations.
“Oh, no it doesn’t,” my opponents responded. They backed up their rejoinder with arguments about Bush, regurgitated Senate press releases, hype, and personal attacks.
I fear I called them on the inconsistency.
“I don’t understand why the Republicans hate it,” Ashley Proctor wondered. She’s a social engineer in Madison, Wisconsin.
“It’s simple,” Jon Friar said. He has a PhD in Economics and works in a think tank. “They hate it because a BLACK DEMOCRATIC LIBERAL got it passed.
“It’s true,” he continued. “Google “N*gger President” and see how many hits you get.”
About half of all Americans hate it because a BLACK DEMOCRATIC LIBERAL got it passed?
Horse puckey.
I took Mr. Friar up on his suggestion. Darned few hits. There were about 30,700 results in 0.36 seconds for his phrase, a few less or about 26,400 results in 0.29 seconds for the phrase with the “i” in it. I figured that wasn’t enough, so I removed the quotes. At least that turned up about 3,070,000 results in 0.31 seconds for both words no matter where they appear in the piece. Three million. Not too shabby, right Mr. Friar?
Two observations are worth noting:
1. Many of those searches turned up posters blaming conservatives (and teens) for using the N word, not posts calling Mr. Obama one; and
2. A search on just President Obama got about 1,730,000,000 results. One point seven billion.
It seems the Googlers looking for straight news about Mr. Obama outnumber the racists at least 500:1.
With a hat tip to Mike Godwin, As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of blaming opposition to Obama on his race approaches 1.
I have casually observed that the race card is never played before three strong, data-driven arguments refute a liberal position and that it rarely takes more than seven.
The race card is as offensive as the Hitler card. In fact, I see the race card as the new Hitler card, played by the “yeah, well, he said” side about they time they realize they’re losing the data-driven discussions of current Administration policies.
Doesn’t anyone else find it disquieting that the very same people who demand we rename the Washington Redskins for the “obvious racial bias” in the team name keep reminding us that Mr. Obama is a black democratic liberal?
Democrats then: “the cost of insurance will go down by $2,500 per family per year.”
Democrats now: “It’s OK if premiums double for average people.”And
Democrats now: “Americans are behind us!”
A Quinnipiac poll released October 1 showed that voters oppose Obamacare 47-45%. [Worth noting in the poll is that, while almost half of American voters oppose Obamacare, a lot more are opposed Congress’ antics cutting off funding for it or shutting down government. This is a debacle no one can win, least of all the American public.]