G/day

1. Wooh, racism … liberal hue and cry for aff action is … curiously absent.
2. Wealth transfer (HT).
3. 2nd hand smoke, meet 2nd hand consent.
4. Scary story?
5. War on marriage, the economics front.
6. “Snuck in” … uhm, no. Yet another lie appears.
7. “Transitioned” from the plan you like to the plan you are required to have.
8. Remote touch.
9. Freedom or federal healthcare, pick one. Just remember that.
10. Slime … not the beltway variety.
11. Coyote benefits?
12. Intentional edit?
13. 50k signups … in perspective.

In October of 2012, I noticed an article noting that global warming had essentially stopped since 1997. Well, it’s still stopped, and Professor Judith Curry from the Georgia Institute of Technology is taking a closer look at it.

A paper by her in the peer-reviewed journal Climate Dynamics not only explains the pause, it suggests that the scientific majority have underestimated the role of natural cycles and exaggerated that of greenhouse gases. This is the foundation on which the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC report we keep hearing about) is built, and she’s shaking it to the core.

Imagine that; nature – the massive ecosystem that is our planet Earth – has more influence than man.

Check out this article that includes a graph of what all the various and sundry climate models have predicted, and then a line showing reality. The climate is now at a point at the bottom of the lowest prediction model. On top of that, Professor Curry says that this is likely to continue until at least 2035. She presents evidence of natural cycles that can be documents for the past 300 years in making this claim.

Now, accept or reject Professor Curry’s data or conclusions, we still are left with the nagging issue of predictions, used by the UN, that were presented with 95+% certainty. Somebody didn’t tell Mother Nature. Well, more likely, as Prof. Curry said, “The growing divergence between climate model simulations and observations raises the prospect that climate models are inadequate in fundamental ways.”

“Inadequate.” That’s putting it mildly. Not unlike our climate, actually.

G’day again.

1. Spot the horrible warming trend.
2. Mr Clinton says it was a lie too. And he’s not alone. Of course that begs the question of why, unlike the rest of us, they didn’t realize it when he said it and not now.
3. Enrollment numbers, success was 500k, got 50k … and they lied to get to arrive at 50k  … wonder how low it really was, eh?
4. Doc Ock wasn’t a credible villain … comes to life.
5. Advocates for any given thing often bring them to demonstrations. Liberals find that odd apparently.
6. Servicemen drink. Who knew?
7. Progress in peer review?
8. No. What we need are people to look at studies (eg) which show no correlation between gun violence a gun control legislation.

OK, so let me get this straight. The problem that ObamaCare was trying to fix was this: uninsured people got free healthcare at emergency rooms, but this cost was borne by taxpayers.

So the solution is to subsidize their insurance. The subsidies come from their tax refund via the IRS. Where does the money come for these subsidies? The taxpayer. And for those not getting subsidies for their ObamaCare insurance, many are seeing rate increases to also offset these lower cost plans. And since the Supreme Court called this a tax, then again, the money is coming from the taxpayer.

And since those subsidized plans don’t really get subsidized until folks get the credits on their tax refund, they have to front both the cost of the plan and the cost of the often huge deductibles, until tax time. How about that? The poor give Uncle Sam a no-interest loan. How compassionate.

Here’s the bottom line: The problem was that taxpayers bore the cost of the poor getting free health care. The solution is that the taxpayers bear the cost of insurance for the poor, and the poor bear the full cost of the insurance and thousands of dollars of deductible until sometime the following year. Does that make sense to anyone?

G’day

1. Seems to me the logic problem (I figure about 51% btw) is that “one daughter is a girl born on Friday” doesn’t preclude the other daughter from also being a daughter born on Friday. The other child’s birth day and sex is unconstrained.  The probability any given child is born female is 51% if memory serves. (One coinflip was heads on a Monday what’s the chance that my other flip was tails?)
2. Well, this may be a problem … but at least Mr Obama’s recent promise broken/lie isn’t at issue (after all he never promised his healthcare reforms would not cause job lose).
3. Examining drug development.
4. A boat and a typhoon.
5. Bat-zappers.
6. The car I’d really really like to own and drive when it comes out, but the boneheads in Washington most likely won’t let me.  There is no excuse for this rampant stupidity.
7. Art meets the modern Political Correctness.
8. The iceberg tip.
9. A science lesson for the global warming alarmists (and those think any science is settled on either side).

Meet Simon Fitzmaurice, an Irish filmmaker who chose life in the face of certain death:

Ruth Fitzmaurice watched as the consultant, a man they had never met before, entered the hospital room and made his way towards her husband’s bed.

Simon, a talented filmmaker and the father of three small boys, lay there with a tube going down his throat, pushing air into his lungs, allowing him to breathe but preventing him from being able to talk.

They listened as the medic spelled out in no uncertain terms what he expected them to do.

‘He basically announced that this was the end of the road,’ explains Ruth. ‘That was it, they had done all they could – that he had phoned Simon’s own consultant in Beaumont Hospital who agreed that ventilation for Motor Neurone Disease (MND) is not advocated in Ireland.’

The consultant continued, telling Simon that it was now time for him to make ‘the hard choice’ – to agree to come off the ventilator.

But Simon was not going to give up that easily.

Despite the consultant’s stark and very clear recommendation, Simon refused to grant permission to take him off the machine that was keeping him alive.

‘Simon’s family very much think for themselves, and Simon in particular is a very strong character,’ smiles Ruth. ‘He wouldn’t be fazed by being told what to do by a doctor, he would question things and say: “Hang on a second.”

‘The consultant told us if he stayed on the ventilator that he wouldn’t get out of the hospital. With MND [a degenerative condition that destroys the cells that control voluntary muscles and can affect speaking, walking, breathing, swallowing and general movement] it’s like, “where do you think this is going? You’re only going to get worse. Why would you choose to ventilate?” So that’s when we decided to fight.’

Not only did they decide not to take Simon off the ventilator they went a step further by deciding to have more children (they already had three when they received his diagnosis). They ended up having twins.

‘Everyone thought we were a bit mad,’ laughs Ruth. ‘But we felt in the face of death and with everything that had happened, well, kids are the ultimate opposite of all that, they’re life-affirming.’

But that’s not all. Simon also went on to finish a script that he had been working on for a movie he will direct starting next year.
Rather than accepting a death sentence, Simon has chosen to go on living life to the fullest possible. It’s a beautiful picture of what it truly means to choose life. Be sure to read his entire story.

Haven’t done a new one of these in a while. We’ve got 2 new polls up (in addition to the perennial social network one).

You can answer how the Affordable Care Act has affected your insurance policy and your insurance costs. And feel free to rant or rave in the comment section of this post. How is this new law affecting you?

During this evening, I’m going to be doing a long-overdue upgrade of the WordPress software that runs this blog. While that’s happening, there’s no telling what you might see here. But on the other side of this, you’ll see a slightly different-looking SCO, as well as a more secure one (which is the primary reason I’m doing this).

Update: The update is complete. The look of the site may change a bit as I do some tweaking, and you may see more on the sidebar as I play around a bit. Now that we’re current, there are new features and plugins that become available, so I may be trying some out for a spin.

Day off yesterday, but work slammed in during the evening … and no workout no posting.

1. By whose standard is “it crappy”. Not yours, theirs.
2. Liberal bias and media.
3. You won’t lose your doctor, oh, wait .. she did.
4. Ms Ensler’s little play rebounds.
5. Unregulated. Alas, there is no middle road. I’d suggest for all drugs and herbs, regulation and certification be voluntary. The cost of regulation would be countered by the sales perk of noting that you are regulated. I’d continue with a rejoinder that the typical FDA drug regulation level (the highest level of regulation) indemnify you from tort.
6. My thought was “sounds like  a straw” .. which is probably not proper.
7. Tightly and loosely coupled and stability.
8. Guess I won’t be retiring to Alaska.
9. Global warming increasing violent weather … which if true means we aren’t experiencing global warming.
10. I do like her music.
11. A cricket race.
12. So, do you want to terrify your wife or girlfriend.
13. A book noted.
14. The IRS thang resurfaces.
15. Another book noted (which I bought and started reading). (HT)
16. And I’m ashamed to say I’ve never seen this movie.
17. Now there’s a plan … that hasn’t exactly considered elections.

The House Republicans have produced a devastating video. Keep doing this, guys.

Good, err, day.

1. For the Depends wearing vampire in your life.
2. And speaking of Romania …
3. Halloween.
4. Sad commentary.
5. Ms Sebellius apparently thinks that one of the most heavily regulated industries is unregulated. What I wonder does she think a heavily regulated industry might look like? Or how she might describe an actually unregulated market.
6. A big atom.
7. “Every good modeler” which I guess excludes the climate crowd and a lot of economists (at least who offer that the reason their model wasn’t followed was because in real life people acted irrationally).
8. Apparently not all Democrats are willing to deny Obama’s “if you like it you can keep it” wasn’t a lie.
9. Completely amazing. If you watch one thing on YouTube this week, make it this.
10. Heh.
11. I’ve described Obamacare as “moving around deck chairs on the Titanic” … here’s a similar analogy.
12. Optimism.
13. Cool.
14. Celebrating the grease pen, for myself I prefer ink … except when on airplanes. Ink pens do bad things when cabin pressure changes.
15. Bang tech.
16. Getting closer to the next car I might buy. I’m looking for 3 digit mpg before I pull the trigger.
17. College staff that needs to spend more time with simple arithmetic and expanding thirds as decimals.

Yeah, I know I’ve been harping on ObamaCare for quite a while now, but there’s just so much wrong with it. And I’m not speaking of the website. All I’ll say about that is that the oversight that was given to putting that together is the same oversight you’re likely to see on the program itself. How does that make you feel?

No, the big deal is the fact that what you were sold is not what you’re getting. You were given some promises about this that were repeated over and over.

Well of course no one was saying you’d lose your coverage. Obama couldn’t have sold this particular bill of goods if he’d been honest about it. What we’re getting are millions of Americans whose insurance companies had to—had to—cancel their policies because they didn’t meet ObamaCare’s standards. Yes, you can keep your plan, as long as the government says you can. And then you can’t. Ben Shapiro tweeted, “PolitiFact rated Obama’s ‘If you like your plan, you can keep it’ as ‘half true.’ Which half? ‘If you like it’?”

Oh, and you can keep your doctor, as long as he doesn’t leave the practice, or get laid off from the hospital. There are links in the show notes to stories about how the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is, for many Americans, not being very protective in this regard.

And the “affordable” part? Not so much, either. First there was the promise.

And now comes the reality. Supporters of ObamaCare, most notably, are getting acute cases of “sticker shock” as they find out how much their premiums will go up. A writer at the left-wing Daily Kos website was floored that his rates were doubling.

I never felt too good about how this was passed and what it entailed, but I figured if it saved Americans money, I could go along with it.

I don’t know what to think now. This appears, in my experience, to not be a reform for the people.

What am I missing?

Well for starters, you’re missing the reality of basic economics. And, as Dave Ramsey says, you’re missing basic math skills. What happening is that non-subsidized premiums are skyrocketing, but even if you get the subsidies, the deductibles are huge, reaching 10-12 thousand dollars. Sure the insurance may be affordable, but the health care is not.

But it’s not even so much the broken promises, so much as it is the fact that they knew, from the start of this awful bill, that they couldn’t keep it. Regulations within the bill itself give an estimate that 40 to 67 percent of customers who bought their own insurance will not be able to keep their policy. That’s an estimate right in the bill.

But Obama kept parroting that promise, and the media kept dutifully reporting it. From the “Now They Tell Us” Department, NBC News now reports this rather important bit of information, now that the bill has passed the Congress and the Supreme Court, and has started signing people up. And this startling revelation was worth a whopping 21 seconds on the NBC Nightly News.

Yeah, you can report on how the administration lied to us, but what about the journalistic malpractice in not doing this digging years ago? I’m looking at all of you, including CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC and Fox.

Why is it that conservatives saws this coming but liberals didn’t? And why were conservatives who pointed this out called “racists” (and still are)? The truth would have benefited conservatives, liberals and independents. But blind partisanship won the day, and we’ve all been dragged into the same pit.

Indeed, dealing with the pre-existing conditions issue and lowering the cost of insurance are admirable goals. But the ObamaCare way of dealing with this is, overall, not the way to do it. The Republicans have had their proposal up on the web for all to see for years; a plan to fix the specific problems without upending the entire industry and forcing government’s choice on the individual.

The American Psychiatric Association has bowed to pressure again.

A shocking announcement made by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in its latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders caused an uproar among pro-family organizations and many others, as the APA states it now classifies pedophilia as a sexual orientation or preference instead of a disorder.

The APA is either becoming less about psychiatry and more about political correctness, or it’s too easily pushed around by interest groups. It’s classification of homosexuality as a “sexual orientation” gave a huge boost to mainstreaming of that behavior. Now what?

Update: New information. The American Family Association was right, that “sexual orientation” was used referring to pedphila. However, the American Psychiatric Association now says that was a mistake.

In response to media calls, including queries from Charisma News, the APA admitted there was an error in the DSM and announced plans to correct its manual to make it clear that it does not classify pedophilia as a sexual orientation.

Oops.

1. So. Lie?
2. Awesome for some, somewhat ridiculous for others.
3. There’s gold in them thar hills, which is the crux of the problem.
4. Privacy.
5. Skill and tech.
6. Progress, not.
7. It may be a design flaw, but it’s also a design requirement because the designers can’t allow the average person to see how much of a better break others … and how to game his own response to get the same break.
8. ‘Cause it’s important we screen Ms Merkel’s calls for her connections to terrorist cells.
9. No lions, not problem … apparently.
10. I sincerely hope that ‘s a typo. The quote “page 230 … of a speech” should never be seen. Nobody should talk for 230 pages straight. Ever.
11. In the real world, when experiment fails to be in accordance with theory, the theory is suspect. In the dismal science, it’s not so.
12. Yet another climate prediction (more and bigger large storms) falls by the wayside.
13. Someone fails to realize “rewards spending” is not the principal function of the bank.

Moving on (ward)

1. Gosh, the distinction of are you a “body with a soul” or a “soul with a body” seems to me a lot like is “that a particle or a wave”. Why isn’t both the default answer?
2. Obfuscating the young.
3. From an IT perspective, healthcare.gov.
4. Sounds like interface problems galore.
5. A core liberal fallacy along the lines of “if we all just talked about stuff and emphathized more” there’d never be war and conflict rears its head. Sorry, you can be as reasonable and empathetic as you want … Hitler (or Stalin or the modern equivalent) won’t.
6. Not understanding the whole public servant thing apparently.
7. Geesh, I’m in my 50s. I thought that would be my likely retirement age, my kids .. who knows. Probably 80 or 90, eh?
8. Cinema.
9. Heh.
10. An essay, the like of which we should probably see more. We fear death because we avoid it or is it the other way around?