Public Option

A public option in health care is an insurance plan run by the government. Every other country in western civilization has some kind of public option I believe. I may be wrong there. Some say that if there is no public option in legislation, then there is no reason to continue the fight for reform. I agree. Either shit or get off the pot.

I'm calling our new medical overlords the USHS, the United States Health Service.

What are some good things about a public option?

• There is a minimum set of benefits (more or less).
• There is a baseline standard for the price and results behind benefits.
• "Everyone else" finally has a place to go where they can get access to organized health care.
• The concept of preexisting conditions is pretty much thrown out the window because every one is covered all the time (more or less).
• The USHS can bully the medical and pharmaceutical industries in to lowering direct cost by simply changing the laws as they go.
• Perhaps incentives can be born that will guide people toward healthier lives.
  

What are some bad things about a public option?

• Insurance companies have to pay taxes and do not have the ability to change the law to their benefit like the government does so they cannot compete on a level field.
• Everything becomes so standard that there is no point in using anything but the standard. This means lack of choice.
  
• All political decisions in the future will revolve around the USHS. and how the USHS is funded. it will be in the room when every major and minor plan is hatched because it directly affects every American every day on a primal level.
  
• After a while, there is no incentive to catch and stop fraud.
• Lack of competition will lead to lack of innovation.
• People will become disconnected from the cost of health care. They wall say it is 'free'.
• Eventually, people will be told how to live their lives and choices they make may be punished via the USHS.
  

If you pay close attention, many of the bullets are in both good and bad lists. They are simply worded differently. I'm sure I've missed half the bullets. Any one have some to add, or argue.

As I write this, I am trying to decide which side of the issue on which I fall. Something tells me we need public socialized health care. I'm not sure what. It does feel like one of those things that society was invented to create. We have markets for much of everything else considered to be absolutely necessary like  food, housing, defense, water, cable TV and internet access.

Notes:

Something I've resisted complaining about because I do it every time is the sun in my eyes on the bus. I get it four times a year instead of two because of the time change. there I complained about it. Now I can move on until spring time.

Today was pretty much a nightmare. Everything blew up or burned down just as fast as we could poor gasoline the pile.

The U. S. has a higher ratio of public debt to GDP than is permissible to be admitted to the European Union. We are worse than Italy. We owe too much to the rest of the world. it is a good thing we have a strong military. It is the only thing keeping the wolves from our door. (left right and center)

It was pretty outside. It felt like summer in some place nice in the summer. We in East Texas have to wait for November for this weather. Someone out there might be muttering 'global warming' under their breath, but it has always been like this in my memory.

One of the folks at work has trouble opening some excel sheets and accessing email. The machine seems fine. Noting is going haywire on her network. Nothing is sticking out on the box. I am the tech guy. I have to be on top of that. I don't know. I'm guessing that it must be something to do with the shared spreadsheets, which should be banned, and the 33 hops the network makes between her and the email server.

Pics

Sunset from the office window. We are back in that part of the year where I'll bring more of these online.

Bus sign.

SUSE platform Identification

Note the first command below produces i586 and the second command produces i686 and i386. Trust me when I tell you that this inconsistency is a pain in the ass. RPMs use the fist and many system scripts use the second.

>$ cat /etc/SuSE-release
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (i586)
VERSION = 11
PATCH LEVEL = 0

>$ uname -a
Linux dtx-e04 2.6.27.19-5-pae #1 SMP 2009-02-28 04:40:21 +0100 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

Lunch Conversation

Jack

Jack, an ex employee, came up. We discussed his placement on several scales including personality, engineering, ex employee status, photography, and fun. Jack took a picture of a red 1950's era car recently that was beautiful. It was the car really that spoke.

Jack came up again later in the day. That's funny because I go weeks without so much as hearing his name and now he came up twice in one day organically.

Best root beer

I was drinking an A&W. Aaron read on the side the words "Made with aged vanilla." This started a conversation about the best root beer. I made a crack about A&W using the vanilla left in the back of the warehouse.

There were several high end root beers mentioned. St. Arnold's root beer was highly recommended. A&W was the best of the cheap root beer. This led to the next topic.

Best Cheap Beer

First the definition of a cheap beer was argued. Some said that cheap beer is one that has been advertised all over the place.  That definition got shot down. There was never a real consensus on the subject. Then many brands came up like Budweiser and Lone Star. I lost track.

Notes:

I did lunch today without contact lenses. My left one was driving me nuts and i took them out. It was liberating walking around with no correction. it was difficult to cross drive ways. The world looked strange from the top of the sixth floor of the parking garage. I put them in after lunch, switching eyes.

My watch is not updating automatically. I get an error every time. This piece of crap is just plane not working. The curvature of the Earth is in the way of receiving the signal from Colorado. What a rip.

It took a blue and yellow crayon, a crying fit and a really big eraser, but Elle's homework is done.

Rush

I listened to Rush Limbaugh's Fox interview from Fox News Sunday. I really need to find out if there is a way to listen to his show, even if it is on some kind of time delay. I cannot afford a subscription.

When Rush was asked "If you had an interview with the president what is the first question you would ask?" Rush said the same thing that I would have said.

From memory, "What is it about this country that you don't like that makes you want to destroy it?"

When I look at all the bank bailouts, the abandonment of our commitments in foreign lands, the invention of an imaginary commodity to add taxes to just about everything called cap and trade, attempts to silence critics with legislation, and any number of other decisions made by this congress and administration, I want to know the answer to that question. Is this a deliberate attempt to bring harm to the U. S.? Is this revenge for something? Do you want to turn the U. S. in to Europe consequences be dammed?

What is the motivation for losing a war? Either you are a coward (unwilling to win) or you are incompetent. Obama loves to hear himself talk. Talking is the goal for Obama. Engagement engagement engagement. For God's sake, make sure you  never get anywhere because  then you have no reason for further engagement.

Obama's presidency reminds me of a young marriage. They get all caught up in the hype and the pomp. They plan and plan and the big days comes and there is a honeymoon. Then, a bit later, the dishes need doing. The babies start showing up. The bills never stop.

Notes:

First dry walk in in a while. There were still some puddles.

If I am ever up for a Nobel, I'll know I'm doing something wrong. An Ignoble prize is another matter.

Time Change

My stomach was not amused by the time change. It started rumbling at 11:15. It felt more natural to be out at real noon to go to lunch. There was something about the angle of the son and the time of day that just felt more appropriate.

Every one had something to say about the time change. We normally leave leave around 18:00 at my office. It was depressing having the sudden change. It is not that it is dark. It is that the time changes literally over night. If we just didn't worry about the time and did what needed to be done, I just don't think it would be a problem.

Two people came to me saying they woke up early and could not get back to sleep. This was not a problem for me. The first indication of anything different was the sun coming up. The weather presenter seemed to be worried that people would be upset by the sun's antics.

I say that we start a campaign to get rid of daylight savings time. DST is a menus.

A couple of fun videos

Halloween night ass whoopan. No one won, but it is fun to listen to the guy filming. "Give me your email. I'll send you a copy." Normally, one person is just much better at kicking ass than the other in these random encounters.

Then comes one titled "Don't forget the hand break." Stick around to the end. It is quite sad. That looked like a new vehicle too.

Then comes the police chase. This is an old one. I like the last little bit. The cop beets the dog to the tackle. That is the cop I want responding to my call.

Notes:

New rule for Faire. Nat must wear safety glasses when she heads to the restroom while wearing her armor. That is all.

I'm getting a bit upset with LiveLeak. Their videos are mostly wide screen on their site, but the embed code makes them 4x5 (not wide screen). When I try to fix the code, it cuts off the top and bottom of the smashed video. Come on guys. Bump it up a notch in the priority queue.

Put mink oil on my boots. I double peppered the bottom seams where I think the water came in. Gave the rest of the boot a good dose as well. That can of Mink Oil is 10 years old. It still felt te same as before. I used an old toothbrush. Handy. I suppose a can of sealer still being good after 10 years is a pretty good sign that the sealer works.

It turns out that 401K was a bad idea. Pensions are underfunded. Inflation is going to kill the idea of investing over the next couple years. It is almost worth spending your money now. You can't save enough money to survive in the future and today. The idea of retirement is in danger. Not sure I like the idea of working until the day I drop, but that looks more and more likely every day I live.

4x4 van

The reason he disappears behind the hill is to change his shorts.

That thing just looks like it would float. I think I know what vehicle Top Gear will make amphibious next time. It should be one of these things. They are half way there straight off the lot. Why don't we have any of these vehicles in the U.S.? I mean surly there is a market for 4x4 diesel vans that almost float here.

RC aerial footage

"I love these footages." That is all the description that came with the video. I like them too. The little bit at the beginning using Google Earth is interesting, but over used. I've seen that trick so many frigging times it has already become a cliche. Still, the person taking the footage gets why people love these things. I want to see one that flies down a river bason or valy or something along those lines for miles.

This is what I'm talking about with the squished view. This video was shot in 16:9 but I must embed it in 4:5. LiveLeak needs to get on the ball.

American Football Question

Will someone please explain why the above video was called 'An Epic Fail"? I do not understand football enough to know.

Notes:

I live less than a mile from a gun range. On clear days in the Fall, you can hear a popcorn sound coming form the north while outside. That is the gun range. Today, there is the normal level of distant snap crackle pop. Then, every couple of minutes there is a low thud that nearly makes the ground shake. I would like to know if it is a .50 or some other different kind of weapon that I'm not familiar with.

Our dryer is kind of cheap. I forget exactly what we paid for it. The lint tray is small. You have to let it run for thirty minutes or so and then go clear the tray out. Then run a full dry again to get a load of clots dry. Annoying.

The cars behind Fast And Furious (2?)

Reboard plan

There is a story of a man in the early days of flight asking to be taken up in a two seat biplane plane for a bit of barnstroming. He neglected to fasten his seatbelt if there was one at all and fell out of the plane at the top of a loop. His guardian angle was on the job and he landed on the tail of the plane s it passed through the bottom of the loop.

This kind of thing is probably why barnstorming was regulated out of existance.

First impression of Ubuntu 9.10

Works the same as 9.04. Besides the sound issue (see earlier post) everything else that I have tried on day one appears to be working normally with one exception.

Firefox is working better. The version of Firefox in Ubuntu 9.10 is 3.5.4 at this time. The one notable betterment is the choppiness of response issue that I have had in the past appears, in the short term, to have been fixed. I'm sure I'll blog more if it comes back. The issue was mostly noticeable in online video. The video would skip and catch up in a skipping action. Audio was not affected. It was very annoying and may very well have been fixed. I do not notice the skipping in the rest of Firefox either.

Ubuntu 9.10

I upgraded from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10 using the upgrade utilities. It worked except sound gave me an error. It was something about bluetooth that failed every time I tried to do anything that activated the sound system. I found a place that told me what to 'purge' from apt-get. This caused the error to stop, but still no sound.

Well Kelly doesn't handle obstacles well. I had to stop and walk away from the computer for a moment. I mumbled and stomped around in an angry tone for a bit. I looked for something to eat but came up blank. I threw a load of laundry in and came back to the computer.

Diagnostics step one. Check the settings.

Volum: set to 0%.

Set volume to 50%

Worked.

Sometimes it is that easy. Why do I let myself get so worked up over crap?

My Flash Forward

In my flash forward I was sitting in front of my computer, staring at a blank page trying to come up with something to write. I had just had a glass of wine and was drinking a glass of hot chocolate to kill the taste and trying to come up with something to say. I was trying to come up with a topic for a blog entry. I think I failed. I'm not sure. Something was there, getting close to the surface. Something was ready to be born. I reached for the keyboard with a light heart. I was ready. It was ready.

Then I came to.

Notes:

My new CAT boots, the one's that say "waterproof" on the side, are not waterproof. I need to mink oil them. I only have a fifteen year old can of mink oil. I wonder if there is something better these days.

I listened to PodCastle today. It was episode PC075_CuranderoAndTheSwede. The person reading it had sometimes in the background that made a worrying noise. I believe it was fan on his laptop. It got louder and louder as he recorded and topped out at the fan sound that laptops make. It was distracting.

Idea for an Android app. Google already has a sky app that tells you all kinds of cool information about stars and static stuff. They need the same thing for known satellites, the IST and ships like the shuttle and the Russian ships, GPS satellites, communication satellites. Everything labeled and moving in its orbit.  As you aim your phone up in the sky it highlights what is up there, looking back down. I bet that one would get some attention.

Thank you "hope and change"

$150,000,000,000 for 650,000 jobs. That is $230,000 a job, please check my math. Fantastic job yourself there Mr. President. You are sinking a spike in to the heart of this country. You are out to destroy this country. That or you are incompetent.

I'm not sure which of those I hope is the answer. If they are out to destroy America, then that is really a bad thing. If they are incompetent and cannot do math, then that is a really bad thing too. The republican would not do any better a job.

Experts are now saying that the U. S. taxpayer will never get their money out of GM. In the U. K. they are suffering through the whole good bank bad bank thing in every industry. The tax payers are sucking up the bill for all the failures and the good bits are getting sold off to inverters

So, if you screwed off and pissed away all your investment in the early 2000's, you get a bailout from the taxpayer. If you scrimped and saved and now have a bit put away for a rainy day, you get screwed by inflation.

There is a not saying the over all U. S. economy grew by 3.x% so we are out of recession. The rub is, there are no jobs coming with this 'recovery'. Companies have trimmed the fat to the bone. It kind of looks like they intend to stay that way for a while.

Between outsourcing and glottalization, there are fewer and fewer people in the U. S. who can afford all those great cheap products.

The U. S. economy is headed to hell in a rocket powered handcart.

If I got any number of hits the White House wold bad mouth me on their web site. They would bash my math and tell me I'm a fear monger. I can divide. Maybe I can catch some of that Fox News hatred overflow. I'll take what I can get.