Well, That Didn't Take Long...

The GOP is already planning to make some hay from the Supreme Court ruling on ObamaCare last Thursday.  Specifically, they plan to use the reconciliation process to fast-track a repeal of ObamaCare – because in the reconciliation process no filibustering is allowed, so they only need a simple majority (51 votes) to kill it.  This is possible because the Supreme Court redefined the mandate as a tax, and the reconcilation process is open to any bill including taxes...

History of Rock 'n Roll...

...in 100 riffs.  I recognized most of them until he got into the 60s or so.  In the last 30, I only recognized one of them!

Learn About Fracking...

A nicely done, fact-based documentary, just a half hour long:

Volcanic Temperatures in Charlottesville, Virginia...

According to this weatherman on a Richmond, Virginia weather station, literally volcanic temperatures:



But I checked my mom's computer (located in her home near Charlottesville), and it's still up.  So this must not be for real :-)

Victoria Arlen...

Frankie T. is one of my colleagues at work.  Victoria Arlen (swimming at right) is a friend of her family, and Frankie introduced me to Victoria's remarkable story.

Just three years ago, Victoria's legs were paralyzed and she was in a vegetative state.  But in 2009, she began an amazing recovery – and now, just three years later, legs still completely paralyzed, she is a member of the U.S. Paralympics swim team headed for competition in London.  Victoria's story is an uplifting tale of determination and grit, well worth a few minutes of your time to get acquainted with.  There's a two part (non-embeddable, dang it!) video story (part 1 and part 2), and more information here, here, here, and here...

Quote of the Day...

From Scott Adams, on today's Dilbert strip:

I am Mordac, the preventer of information services!

In one mordant sentence, a perfect summation of how corporate employees typically view IS (or IT) guys.  Fortunately for our collective sanity, there are exceptions to this (especially for enterprises using this), though even just a few years ago the exceptions were far fewer.  Every IS or IT guy I've ever met is painfully familiar with this stereotypical way of how their fellow employees view them – and how that view has more than a little truth to it.  The best work their butts off to avoid being viewed this way...

Twenty Groaners...

...via reader Simi L.  Some of these I've heard before, but many are new to me:

1. Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married. The ceremony wasn't much, but the reception was excellent.

2. A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says, "I'll serve you, but don't start anything."

3. Two peanuts walk into a bar, and one was a salted.

4. A dyslexic man walked into a bra.

5. A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm, and says: "A beer please, and one for the road."

6. Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: "Does this taste funny to you?"

7. "Doc, I can't stop singing The Green, Green Grass of Home."
"That sounds like Tom Jones Syndrome."
"Is it common?"
"Well, It's Not Unusual."

8. Two cows are standing next to each other in a field. Daisy says to Dolly, "I was artificially inseminated this morning."
"I don't believe you," says Dolly.
"It's true; no bull!" exclaims Daisy.

9. An invisible man marries an invisible woman. The kids were nothing to look at either.

10. DejaMoo: The feeling that you've heard this bull before.

11. I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day, but I couldn't find any.

12. I went to a seafood disco last week...And pulled a mussel.

13. What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh.

14. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says, "Dam!"

15. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Not surprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

16. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel, and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories.
After about an hour, the manager came out of the office, and asked them to disperse.
"But why," they asked, as they moved off.
"Because," he said. "I can't stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer."

17. A woman has twins, and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt , and is named 'Ahmal.' The other goes to a family in Spain ; they name him 'Juan.' Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, "They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal."

18. MahatmaGandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him . . . A super-calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

19. A dwarf, who was a mystic, escaped from jail. The call went out that there was a small medium at large.

20. And finally, there was the person who sent twenty different puns to his friends, with the hope that at least ten of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did?

That's quite enough for now, don't you think?

Is Universal Suffrage a Good Thing?

First a clarification: “suffrage” means the right to vote; “universal suffrage” means the right for all adult citizens to vote.

I've wondered for a long time about the wisdom of universal suffrage, and finally I read about someone else thinking the same thing.  The linked post doesn't talk about any proposed alternatives, but does leave you expecting that any proposal would be to somehow limit suffrage to those who understood how democracy actually works. 

I don't much like that idea (though I wonder if it might not be better than universal suffrage), but for years I've been thinking about a different approach: making some people's votes count more than others.  I didn't have a name for it, but I coined one just now: “asymmetric suffrage”.  There are many ways one could construct such a system, but here's an example (not a serious proposal, mind you, but just an example to give you the gist of what I'm talking about).

Every adult starts with 1 vote, but various kinds of life experience and accomplishments could be used to modify that.  For example:

Multiplier   When
----------------------
1.5            when you have owned a home for 10 years
2.0            if you honorably complete at least 4 years of military service
1.5            you obtain a college degree in engineering, medicine, science, or math
2.0            if you have been the owner of a business with 10 employees for 5 years
1.5            you reach the age of 40
2.0            you reach the age of 60
0.5            you are a public employee
0.5            you are on welfare
0.0            you are convicted of a felony (removed if pardoned or overturned)

For example, if you're a 45 year old engineer who has owned a business employing 50 people for 10 years, owned a home for 20 years, and served four years in the Army, your multiples would be:

1.0   that everyone starts with
2.0   for service in the Army
1.5   for your engineering degree
2.0   because of your business ownership
1.5   because you're over 40
-------
9.0   the multiple of all the above; your vote would count as 9

Whereas, if you're 25 years old, have a degree in French literature, are on welfare (because you can't find a job), then your multiples would be:

1.0   that everyone starts with
0.5   because you're on welfare
-------
0.5   the multiple of all the above; your vote would count as half a vote

Naturally there would be a huge debate about what the multiples should be.  Surely there must be some that we could all agree on, though, no matter what our political, religious, and intellectual leanings might be.  A multiple based on knowledge of how our democracy works (or doesn't!) might be an interesting addition.

Completely aside from the problem of getting anyone to agree with me that this is a good idea, there's another problem, a political one: this scheme couldn't possibly work without some reliable form of voter identification.

Thoughts, anyone?

How I'd Like to See Our Healthcare System Work...

I read a piece by Holman Jenkins this morning in the Wall Street Journal.  It introduces a new term I hadn't heard before that gave me a chuckle: “lip-commitment” – referring to politicians who have verbally committed to something, but haven't actually done it yet.  He also proposes a solution to this country's healthcare problems, via a relatively small tweak to ObamaCare:

Now just modify the Affordable Care Act so buying any health policy authorized by the new charter, no matter how minimalist, satisfies the employer and individual mandate.

What would follow is a boom in low-cost, high-deductible plans that leave individuals in charge of managing most of their ordinary health-care costs out of pocket. Because it would be cheap, millions who would opt not to buy coverage will buy coverage. Because it will be cheap, companies will direct their low-wage and entry-level employees to this coverage.

I don't believe the solution is anything like that simple, but this is definitely a component of the reform I would like to see: a return to real insurance, instead of the all-you-can-eat prepaid healthcare pseudo-insurance we have today.

In response to a reader's question, here are the pieces of a reformed healthcare system that I'd like to see here in the U.S.  A lot of these pieces interact with others, so they really need to be considered together.  And before people start yelling at me, I know that the chances of these elements being enacted together at that national level are vanishingly close to zero.  So shut up, already – it's my dream!  The elements:

1. Either eliminate healthcare costs as deductible by employers, or make them deductible by individuals (or both).  This would eliminate the tax bias toward employer-provided healthcare (this never was a good idea, and only came into being as an accidental side-effect of WWI-era wage controls).  Employers could still provide healthcare, but it would cost them more.  Most employers would drop healthcare benefits like a hot potato, and then most Americans would be shopping for insurance.  Why do I think this is good?  Because it would empower individuals to shop for healthcare and health insurance, choosing the right combination of benefits and cost for them.
   
2. Eliminate all mandated features of health insurance products, both at the federal and state levels.  In other words, allow health insurance providers the same freedom as car manufacturers – let them make high-end and low-end products, some full of glitzy features and others stripped down to the bare metal.  Insurance providers will immediately start promoting high-deductible major medical policies – because they are dirt cheap compared with the feature-laden policies most states mandate today.  Why do I think this is a good idea?  Because then the insurance companies will fall all over themselves trying to find products that the marketplace finds compelling – just like car makers do today.  This will include low-end products (like high-deductible major medical policies) and high-end products (like today's healthcare insurance, if enough people are willing to pay for them).  The most important piece of this is that consumers then get to choose – and the marketplace does the rest.
   
3. Eliminate all state regulations that have the effect of creating a separate market for healthcare insurance within a state.  I can buy a Toyota in any state of this country.  I should be able to buy a Brand XYZ insurance policy the same way.  Why do I think this is a good idea?  That's easy: increased competition always means lower prices and better products.  No government ever produced a product like the iPhone, good service like Zappos, or low prices like Walmart – these all happened through the magic of competition in the marketplace – and the bigger that marketplace is, the better.
   
4. Forbid denial (of high-deductible, major medical policies only) on the basis of pre-existing conditions – but allow insurance companies to recover as much of their costs related to the pre-existing condition as possible.  The idea here is to allow anyone to obtain coverage, no matter what their medical situation – but when an insurance company is forced to accept someone with a pre-existing condition, they can come after all that person's assets to recover their costs, much the way student loans are treated today.  I'm glossing over lots of troublesome details here, like determining what's actually related to pre-existing conditions, dealing with pre-existing conditions that predate adulthood, people uninsured for a short time (like between jobs), etc.  All that would most definitely have to be worked out, and I suspect it wouldn't be pretty.  But...what I like about this approach is that we'd end up in a situation in which two things are true: (1) anybody, with any pre-existing condition can get insurance, and (2) people who choose not to buy insurance until they needed it would be penalized, potentially severely.
   
5. Remove all barriers to forming a robust healthcare reinsurance market.  This has the effect of enlarging the risk pool, an unambiguously good thing for competition.
   
6. Completely separate the welfare component and the insurance component of healthcare-related policy and regulation.  Government programs like Medicare and Medicaid are part insurance, part pre-paid all-you-can-eat healthcare services, and part welfare.  What I'm proposing is requiring that when the government provides (directly or indirectly) health insurance to a program beneficiary, they buy a private health insurance policy to do so.  This has the effect of greatly increasing the size of the risk pools for both the indigent and the elderly, while still keeping it a competitive marketplace.

See what I mean?  Chances of all that passing are zero!

A Lovely Summer Brunch...

I just made this and had it for my brunch...

1 ripe tomato
1 ripe (but not mushy) avocado
1 chicken thigh and leg, roasted
2 tsp mayonaise
1 tbsp dried tarragon OR
2 tbsp minced fresh tarragon

If you're using dried tarragon, be aware that brands vary tremendously in quality.  Around here, the best we've found is Archer Farms, which Albertson's carries occasionally (stock up!) and Target carries usually.  Crush the dried leaves between your thumb and forefinger until they're almost powdered.  Remove any obvious stem fragments.

Cut the tomato, avocado, and chicken into pieces, roughly a quarter inch in size.  Put the tomato pieces and their juices into a bowl and mix the tarragon into them.  If you're using dried tarragon, let stand for 10 minutes or so to rehydrate the tarragon.  Then mix in the other ingredients and eat!

It's Just the Law...

An interesting and very different piece on the ObamaCare ruling by Jazz Shaw...

ObamaCare is Bananas...

Just watch this – it's the best short explanation of the major problems with ObamaCare I've seen yet, in language that anyone can understand...

A Cause for Celebration...

My father is the patriarch of our extended family, and of course he's even more ancient than I am.  Friends and family alike fondly refer to his age as “older than dirt” to edge around any awkward need for a more specific reference.  For him, waking up in the morning is reason enough for celebration – but he's got another reason just now: he's come through a minor surgery (hernia repair) in fine shape.  Through long experience, our family has discovered there's only one way to reliably tell what condition my dad is in: whether he's eating.  And he's eating his favorite food – chocolate milkshakes :-)

So we're celebrating!

Mom's Flowers...

It's got something to do with the combination of weather, “Scott's super soil” (Scott is my brother), and good fortune – all working together to make my mom's yard (near Charlottesville, Virginia) full of beautiful blooms.  Holly (my sister) is keeping a photo journal.  And flowers make moms happy, as everyone knows...

And Then I Read Mark Steyn...

...and was depressed all over again about the ObamaCare ruling.

This is definitely one of those issues upon which one can find any opinion one wants...and which defies rational analysis because of its complexity.

As far as I can tell, ObamaCare's impact on me personally, short term, will be tax increases – more money stolen from my pocket by the government and given to others in its inimitably inefficient manner.  Longer term, I am very worried about the stifling effects of ObamaCare on medical research, innovation, and practitioner compensation.  We currently lead the world on all these fronts, to the point where we dominate.  What happens when we make it unprofitable (or much less profitable) for the businesses and individuals who currently turn the gears of this wonderful machine?  They'll go elsewhere: either to other countries smart enough to take advantage of the bonanza we've handed them, or to other industries.  Either way, innovation most likely gets reduced – or at least our access to it.

Sheesh.

We gotta repeal this pig!

The ObamaCare Ruling...

Watching SCOTUSblog yesterday as the ObamaCare decision was made public, I was as surprised as anyone.  Like many who aren't “progressive”, my first reactions were dismay and anger at the result (ObamaCare upheld!) and utter surprise at the deciding vote (Roberts).  My thoughts tended toward things like alcohol consumption and firearms acquisition.

After getting home from work last night, I set off on a reading junket to see what some smart people were saying – and I was more than a little surprised to see some positive and even optimistic interpretations of the decision from a libertarian or conservative perspective.  A few folks who were most definitely not of the “progressive” persuasion even went so far as to admire Justice Roberts' opinion – and a few “progressives” saw the same issues as dangers for their side.

At this point I can't tell whether these are after-the-fact rationalizations of a bitter decision (lipstick on a pig, so to speak), or if Roberts actually has done the non-progressive world a favor with this decision.  The ideas certainly are interesting, however.  At the end of this post is a collection of links to the original material I read through.  The main lines of hopeful thoughts I read about (in no particular order):

• The part of the decision that struck down the mandate but turned it into a tax is the first Supreme Court ruling that sets a precedent for limiting Congress' powers under the commerce clause.
• The mandate/tax has the effect of shifting a huge part of the cost of medical care to younger people, which you'd think would motivate younger folks to fight the law.
• The ruling materially raises the probability that Obama will be defeated in November, both by boosting Romney's appeal and by re-energizing the Tea Party and other limited-government folks.
• The ruling materially raises the probability that Republicans will have the Presidency, the House, and the Senate in January 2013 – and therefore materially raises the probability of an ObamaCare repeal.
• Tax bills (which ObamaCare now is) can't be filibustered.  This vastly decreases the political difficulting of repealing ObamaCare: the Senate now needs just 51 votes instead of 60.
• The transformation of the mandate into a tax means the ObamaCare bill is imposing a new tax.  The Constitution requires any such bill to originate in the House of Representatives; the ObamaCare bill originated in the Senate.  This presents the possibility of a Constitutional challenge on much firmer grounds than the challenge just ruled on.  Some are proposing that Roberts did this intentionally, so the law could be struck down in a bipartisan fashion.
• The part of the decision ruling that terminating Medicaid funding to states that didn't participate in the Medicaid expansion is actually a significant reining in of federal power over states – and could lead to challenges of other laws that diminish state's rights.

Even in aggregate, the above are not as immediately satisfying as having ObamaCare struck down in its entirety would have been.  They may, however, be better than what many considered the likliest ruling: striking down the mandate, but allowing the rest of ObamaCare to stand.  While I'm no Republican, the prospect of defeating Obama and repealing ObamaCare is very attractive (even more so that a Supreme Court takedown), so I can take some solace in that...

The pile o'links:

• Medicaid impact
• More Medicaid impact
• Commerce clause thoughts
• More commerce clause thoughts
• Taxes and generation cost shifting
• The activity/inactivity line of argument
• Young people screwed by ObamaCare
• Commerce clause precedent-setting
• Even more Medicaid impact
• An act of great cunning?
• Good news for Romney
• Yoo and Epstein podcast
• The gift and the repeal pledge
• Even more commerce clause thoughts, plus politics
• Political genius?
• Major limits on Congress' power
• Lost the battle, won the war
• Everybody wins
• A weird victory for Federalism
• Roberts' Gambit

Morning Walk, with Random Thoughts...

As usual, this morning at around 3 am, the dogs and I gathered near the door for their morning walk.  The last few days, though, have been very confusing for the dogs.  You see, last weekend we replaced the patio door through which we begin our walk.  The old door was a sliding door, sliding from right-to-left, and we walked out the right-hand side of it.  Some of our dogs have been doing this every morning for over 12 years.

The new door, however, opens from the middle, left-to-right, and we walk out of it near the center.  This morning (like the previous few mornings), the dogs gathered near the right-hand side of the door, waiting impatiently for me to affix their leashes.  When I had them all hooked up, and opened the door – the confusion began.  You could almost hear them saying “WTF?”, complete with confused faces, as the door swung toward them.  “This never used to happen!”  Eventually we got it sorted out, and left on our walk...

Three things were much on my mind this morning...

The Supreme Court's decision on ObamaCare is the topper – those few men and women are about to decide something (well, let their decision be known) that has a huge impact on my country and on me personally.  A thought I read from Dave Carter expresses it just about perfectly:

“The very idea that we sit on the edge of our seats, eyes toward Washington DC, waiting on the deliberations and dispositions of nine mortals to tell us how much of our liberty we get to retain is preposterous.”

Yup, that's it, Dave.  And yet...here I am, on the edge of my seat.  And I have utterly no idea how they will rule.  Just a couple hours from the time I write these words, we'll all find out...

Jerry Brown just signed California's (yet again) insane budget, replete with all the usual gimmicks he forswore – and with a new one that tops all the previous gimmicks.  This budget assumes that the compliant sheeple of California will approve a massive tax hike in the November election.  Now the Democratic propaganda engine will swing into action, proclaiming to the sheeple that the sky will fall (and damn soon!) if we don't approve these taxes.  The dollars available to pay for this propaganda are awesome in their quantity, as every single organization that depends on public funding is, of course, wildly enthusiastic about these new taxes.  The teachers, public employees, police, fire, prison guards, and all the other vast army of state employees are represented by unions – and these unions have collected (not necessarily with the consent of their members!) vast hoards of cash to pay for this propaganda.  I am afraid the chances for passage of these tax hikes are reasonably good.  We may be headed down the same spiral that Greece is in the thrall of...

And then there's Fast and Furious, which infuriates me – both the program itself, and the subsequent cover-up of it.  Given the invocation of executive privilege, I'm finding it more and more plausible that not only did the knowledge of Fast and Furious extend to the White House (including Obama himself), but that it might have been ordered from there.  The partisan reaction to it no longer surprises me, but it certainly dismays me to see that because they are Democrats (or because they are black, or both) duly elected Representatives and Senators are refusing to hold Holder in contempt – when he so clearly is in contempt of Congress' request for information (which is itself equally clearly within their purview).  There are precious few Democrats who have committed to voting for the contempt motion later today.  For some reason this partisan reaction is even more depressing to me than the rest of the Fast and Furious mess...

But despite all these less-than-happy thoughts running around in my head, the walk was as beautiful as ever.  The Milky Way glowed overhead, and the dogs were, as always, full of delight and joy.  Cool breezes intermittently puffed down the hill above us, carrying with them the wonderful smells of the chaparral.  The morning was quiet and peaceful, and the dogs and I felt like we owned it completely...

Senior Moments...

This song is dedicated to my parents:

How Our Vision Really Works...

An excellent explication of the way our perception of color actually works, including both the physiology and our brain's influence.  The explanation is very accessible – you don't have to be a scientist to understand it.  What you were taught was almost certainly very different...

A Visual Git Reference...

If, like me, you're new to the world of git – you might find this visual reference quite useful...