Politics
Friday, July 13, 2007
Deb: Living in the Past
Toleration for other religious faiths is a cornerstone of our tradition.
Was, James.
Was.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Deb: Just to clear something up a bit.
Whether or not something is illegal is not a particularly good indicator of whether or not it’s wrong. Also, something can be legal without being right. In addition, with the right judge, anything can be Constitutional, so don’t count on getting any help there.
Just because a majority votes for something doesn’t make it a good idea. It’s just that nobody has worked out a better system of deciding things than the one we used to have, and that one still required a majority to pick the people making the decisions. You can see how well that’s gone. Damned majority gets all itchy when it has to live with representative government.
The system is not inviolate. It can, and will, be replaced by another system. The only question is whether it will be a better one. History suggests that this is rare.
The best system may well be no system at all. I have yet to grok, however, how to channel into something useful the overwhelming compulsion people have to organize each other. Yet another survival skill that’s gotten bigger than its britches in the last little while, and the one that will no doubt be the downfall of the species.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Deb: Which would be why I’ve completely lost interest in Republican politics.
The Southern Baptists and the Evangelical community held a debate last night, and for balance they invited a Mormon.
OK, that’s not the only reason. I’m also deeply disturbed by a party that can take John McCain and Mitt Romney seriously. And that fellow who was Mayor of New York City for a while, too. But post the Terri-pocolypse, the religion thing does not help. At all.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Jay: Quick! Ask Me a Question!
This is a light traffic place to mention it, so I’ll take the risk. It might elicit something and it saves me the work of creating a mailing list of some of the CotC entrants.
As you know, I run Carnival of the Capitalists. As of this week’s edition, it’s becoming more restrictive and has moved to a new home site, Bizosphere.com.
James Pethokoukis of U.S. News & World Report blogs at Capital Commerce, covering mainly the nexus of politics with economics and business.
Coinciding with the January 26 Carnival of the Capitalists, we are having a CotC Q&A with James, in which CotC participants ask about economics or business issues and James answers on his U.S. News blog, with links to CotC and the blogs of those submitting the questions. It’s a nice cross-promotion and very cool.
I e-mailed most of the previous CotC hosts, for starters, and then included it to the CotC mailing list. This resulted in two (really good) submissions. That seems rather slim, but I haven’t gotten around to trying to shake more out of people who have entered CotC over the course of time.
So I was thinking about entering one more myself, to round it out. That has me trying to figure out what and how to phrase it.
That also made me think of posting about it here, to see if perhaps today someone else out there would send me a relevant question, CotC participant or not. E-mail jay at bizosphere dot com or any of my regular addresses, and include your blog URL if you have one.
Things I was thinking of were the fallout from the ownership of congress by the consumer credit industry, where things are going with the popping of the housing bubble, the ongoing consequences of Sarbanes-Oxley and whether there might be backpedalling from it, that sort of thing. Questions other people posed involve internet regulation and whether any of the candidates will or are likely to court small business.
Any other thoughts, or more specific angles on the three items I had in mind? I’d love to have at least three items in the Q&A. Which may or may not become a recurring event. If it does, I’ll pointedly e-mail a master list of past CotC entrants. It’s just that I have to create such a list first. Which I should do anyway, to make sure people are fully and promptly aware of the new rules and location.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Jay: Trying to Come Up With Something to Post…
Landed me on this one, as I wait for this week’s host to publish CotC so I can do my thing updating links and announcing it. Just some rambling around our health care costs…
We pay $764.94 a month for health insurance.
Last year we paid $1050.00 by check for co-pays and uncovered items to the medical center we use, less a refund from an overpayment I made, plus cash for some of the copays, probably balances out at about the $1050, give or take $50.
We paid the hospital $500 for the co-pay for Valerie. Rates changed during the course of the year, but extrapolating forward that would be $10,729.28 for a year.
Plus prescriptions. Which the latest news Deb tells me about negotiations on Romney’s evil health plan would have to be included as part of the minimum required insurance one must purchase. That is, our insurance would cost more due to Romney’s lunacy. A reasonable guess at the new cost of our insurance would be, say, $915 a month, bringing it almost up to the same cost as rent. And to somewhere between breaking even and, more likely, costing more than the cost of prescriptions out of pocket and insurance combined. Especially if there are co-pays on the prescriptions. I complain sometimes, but we aren’t that bad off prescription-wise, after the sometimes massive discount AAA membership provides.
I’m rather impressed with the sheer volume we pay the doctor, apart from insurance. The implication of the copay amounts is about $4000 a year retail in visits, plus lab work. If we paid cash, even without a discount (like doctors are allowed to do that under the agreements they have with insurers), we’d be somewhere between breaking even and saving money, with the exception of maternity coverage.
Self-insurance makes a lot of sense, possibly combined with cheap catastrophic coverage. The trouble is, we’re sometimes scraping to make the co-pay, so it requires actually putting the money aside and being ahead of it, and never having to touch the money for anything else.
Anyway, just rambling, inspired by some of the more exact figures I came up with for the past year. I know how to solve the entire “health care crisis” in a few simple steps, but that’ll have to be another post sometime.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Jay: Daylight Costings Time
How did I miss that daylight savings time had been extended as of 2007?
Perhaps I didn’t, and it simply struck me as unimportant news until I got an e-mail from Microsoft today, pointing me to this article. What a mess! Made worse by the fact that the big client is in flux, though it does appear I will need to take action, including manual updates of Windows 2000, so things mesh okay during the time they are still using those machines.
Silly Congress. What were they thinking?
Monday, January 01, 2007
Jay: Another Unfinished Post
I made the following as a comment elsewhere, then saved a copy to post here and perhaps expand or comment upon further. I no longer recall what I meant to say, be it more on alternate timelines, or my memories of Ford and of the times, or elicit discussion about the pardon, or what. Thus I present just what I commented elsewhere in reference to an opinion wishing Ford had not done the pardon that is actually a transposed wish not to have had Carter win in 1976:
And yet… Carter ensured we got Reagan.
While at the same time Carter gave us Volcker and set us on the path of deregulation, showing even he could have a silver lining (besides ensuring we got Reagan).
I don’t know if anyone has ever addressed it in fiction, but surely Ford’s loss in 1976, and therefore presumably the pardon that tipped the scales, was one of the most pivotal points in American history. It would be fascinating to know where the road not followed would have led, but how can we be so sure it would have been to a better end?
Any extrapolation is just that, with the butterflies increasing in ferocity by the day.
Friday, December 29, 2006
Jay: Quick Hand Me The Sudafed!
Oh wait. I might make drugs out of them thar useful pharmaceuticals, so we can’t risk that, no matter how much congestion has spread to my chest, and no matter how fucking insane the entire concept of the drug war was from its inception.
What is it about that whole thing anyway? Not one President has the balls to say “hold it, this isn’t working, no matter how unconstitutional, costly, or harmful our tactics”? Is there a real-life mind control ray focused on Washington to banish that particular hope of rationality? Perhaps a conspiracy exists to keep the criminal element rich and powerful while increasing the government’s power? One might almost think so. Since they decided they didn’t need an Amendment for this one, it’ll be far harder to repeal. Clever. Tricksy power grabbers. We hates them we does.
But I digress. The plague is if anything worse today, and now we all four have it at some stage or another. Yay. Worse, I have no choice but to go to Wal-Mart for provisions. We’re out of Maalox and a few other key things. Sad.
I’m tempted to try to buy a bed for Sadie while I’m out. I wanted to check Building 19 before resorting to Wal-Mart and/or BJ’s, but that means even more out and abouting. We think the problem is her actual bed and its size, possibly combined with its location and that of other stuff in the room, with maybe a touch of lighting issues all wrapped up in “protect me daddy.” She can be in her room, even on her bed, in the dark, with us, no problem, as long as it’s not involved with actually going to bed. Considering that she turns completely sideways on a queen size bed and stretches most of the way across, the toddler mattress isn’t cutting it, and maybe a twin will be small. Current theories include that she had a bad dream - she does have a rather Calvinesque imagination - or fell out of bed one too many times, or maybe got herself caught and trapped or hurt by the bed rails. She tried to explain to me the other day, but the several animated sentences were all in Sadie tongue. Based on that, she seems to have a problem with the ceiling, which makes no sense unless inspired by a nightmare.
Anyway, hopefully she’ll get over it Soon. At least she timed it for after Valerie started sleeping mostly through, sometimes even doing Sadie’s more normal “sleep like a teenager” routine.
At least ranitidine is still legal. I’m out of that, too.
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Deb: Sadly, having a consisitent rationale for one’s beliefs is out of style.
Indeed, the divide between the laissez faire economic (low taxes, limited regulation of the economy) wing and social anarchy (drug legalization, gay marriage, cops are evil) wing of the libertarian movement is far greater than that between the social and economic conservatives within the GOP.
Sad if true; one would hope that there are a significant number of folks in the Libertarian Party who are there because they believe in staying out of your wallet and your bedroom. Still, if they really wanted to leave you alone, they wouldn’t be participating in any political party, would they? That goes double for the folks Joyner describes here, who are likely to belong to one of the two major parties, I think.
Of course, you very quickly run into a problem of definitions here. I would argue that anyone who wanted to free up the markets while telling you who you can have sex with is not a libertatian, big or little l, at all. Same goes for the pot smoking socialist types.
You either think you should leave other people the hell alone, or you don’t.
Friday, November 10, 2006
Jay: Blogger’s Remorse
This post would make more sense if she were actually a libertarian, but there’s a lot of that going around. Words. Meanings. Who says they have to correspond when they can merely shout out to each other at a distance in passing.
Via Billy Beck and Glenn Reynolds.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Deb: Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.
You get your asses handed to you on a platter and THEN you dump Rummy?
Bizarre.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Jay: To Vote or Not To Vote… a Valid Question
Insty points to another perspective on not voting.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Deb: Why I’m staying home tomorrow:
Deval Patrick v Kerry Healey? I might still lean Republican, even if I’m not registered that way anymore*, but I wouldn’t vote for Kerry Healey if you paid me to do it. The woman irks me. And I’m not quite to the point where I can see leaving my cozy house to vote for a Democrat, even if he does support Cape Wind (which pisses off Ted Kennedy, which makes me very, very happy).
Question 1? I’m opposed to the entire concept of the liquor license, so handing out a few more of them fails to charm me enough to make it worth a trip. Say what you will about California, but it’s downright civilized to be able to buy your tequila at the grocery store. Even there, though, the state gets a nice cut from letting you sell it, then another nice cut once you’ve sold it. It’s such a freaking racket.
Anyhow, there’s something on there about child care workers unionizing, and whatever the other question was, and I can’t be assed to look it up. Because this is the 21st century and the damned ballot is covered in 19th century bullcrap and I just can’t bring myself to care.
And as for the argument that it’s somehow un-American not to vote, I’d say it’s un-American to shut up and do as you’re told even if it makes you throw up a little. If you’ve got to hold your nose to even get near the ballot, maybe it’s time to retain a little dignity and stay home.
*Both political parties can kiss my slimmer-than-usual ass. I didn’t sign on with either one of them. Somebody impresses me, I’ll vote for ‘em. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work, anyway?
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