Saturday, April 8, 2017

Obligatory, 4.8.17

Not much to write about right now.  Just stuff about me, which I think is a bit too much navel gazing.  Yet, that is what I spend time on.   Me.  Stuff close to home is getting the higher priority right now.

Is there a lesson for the larger scene?

For instance, why does the United States need to be involved in somebody else's business?  Why are we bombing anybody?

I know that terrible things going on in the world, but do we have to get ourselves mixed up in it all the time?  There's plenty of bad stuff happening within our own borders.

It seems that the globalists and neo-cons may be getting too much of Trump's attention.  Just saying.


Friday, April 7, 2017

Obligatory, 4.7.17

All of this TeeVee is giving me some bad habits.  It may be hard to change back when I get back.

After one fourth of the way through my treatments, cannot for sure detect any improvement.

At this point, just want to get through them all, and go back.

Not a great day so far.  No problem that I can tell.  Just tired.


Thursday, April 6, 2017

Solutions can be found if the desire to find them exists

At the place where I am being treated for cancer, there is some information displayed which says that the odds are 50-50 that a man will get cancer during his lifetime.  For women, it is a 1 in 3 chance.

Thinking upon that a bit, a universal requirement to have some type of health "insurance" would seem to make sense.  Even though the odds are high that you will eventually get cancer, the odds are lower if you are younger, I would think.  Also, if you are younger, the odds are not zero.  Therefore, you can make a risk pool that can include an entire population and be able to make a catastrophic policy possible, I would think.  Premiums may necessarily be higher for older adults, of course.

So, where does this leave us now?

I don't know enough about the general case for the entire population, but I do know my own case.

As for pre-existing conditions, I caught a lucky break.  I had a pre-existing condition, and under such a rule that would not require these to be covered, I would have been out of luck.

Should I now say that others would just have to be out of luck then, should they find themselves in a similar position as I was?  I don't think I will just say "tough luck" in the answer to that question.  For, in my own case, my last option would have been to move back to Houston and throw myself on the mercies of the public health care system there.  This would have been a nightmare scenario that I would not have accepted.  It would have meant certain death or permanent disability with a very uncertain and painful recovery, if that was even possible.

How can that be justified when a solution exists that would be affordable for the entire population?  Once again, I cannot say for the entire population, but I can say for myself.  The current system worked for me pretty well.  I won't say that it is a good system for all, but it might have some good points that could be applicable for a good solution that everybody could live with.

You have to have the honesty, courage, and will to seek solutions to problems.  It seems to me in our country today that we have a problem there.


A suggestion to eliminate Obamacare

Don't change the money amounts of the subsidies.  Let the subsidies go to the individual taxpayer as refundable credits that can only be used for healthcare. 

The refundable credits can be used to buy healthcare products now offered, but optional as opposed to mandatory.  Any unused credits can be deposited in health care savings accounts.  These amounts can build over time so that they can make catastrophic health insurance policies affordable as one gets older and more likely to need them.

I could support something like this, but what I have read doesn't sound anything like this.  Instead, it looks like they want to go on the cheap, and this will not win.

If you want to win, you will have to bite the bullet and do what you don't want to do.  The Freedom Caucus is trying to go cheap, and this will undoubtedly fail in the long run at least, or even in the short run.  If the GOP submits another cheapskate idea like this, it will be as much a debacle as the last one.  But the damage will be greater.  Every failure increases the likelihood that the Dems will gain power in the next election. 

If the Dems win, they will try to go with universal single payer healthcare.  You can bet on it.


Stupid party outdoes itself

In a matchup between the party of the stupid, which is the Dems, and the Stupid party, which is the GOP, I think the GOP loses.  Why?  There are plenty of stupid people, and the Dems know how to get their votes.  The Stupid party just blunders their way into the Dems wheelhouse, and can lose just by being foolish and just plain stupid.

This business about Obamacare is dumber than dumb.  For one thing, I know that Obamacare is not insurance.  I wrote that myself on this very blog.  But if the Stupid party gets its way, a case like mine leaves me out of luck.  This despite the fact that my case is a one in a million occurrence and can be easily insured.

Unless the miscalled Freedom Caucus can definitely show that cases like mine will definitely be covered, I cannot in good conscience support their efforts.  In fact, I must denounce their efforts as nothing but sheer money grubbing greed.  They are making a "yuge" mistake.

I will never support the Dems, because I think they are evil.  But the GOP cannot rule like this and expect to succeed.  Single payer health care is all but inevitable, thanks to stupidity like this.

I cannot support them, this miscalled Freedom Caucus.


Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Democrats do not care about preserving the filibuster

The loss of this is probably not a good sign.  I am assuming that the GOP will exercise the so-called nuclear option.

The Dems are framing this as a minority rights issue.  This is misleading, as it is commonly understood that minorities mean non-white folks.  Minorities in the Senate mean something different.  It is meant in the political context as one who is not in the majority opinion.  This has little to do with skin color or national origin.  Conflating the two uses of the same word shows that this is a political argument, not a judicial one.

So, it is a political strategy to keep their constituents in a state of rage.  First, by claiming that Hillary should be president because she got more votes; and now this.  Note that this has little to do with the nominee himself.  It has to be framed in other ways that have little to do with anything relevant with the rule of law.

The GOP tried to play it conservatively when they refused to do this during Bush's tenure, but the Dems are going to force them to go nuclear now because they hope to gain an advantage from it.

Of course there is a lot at stake here, policy wise.  However, if the Dems are successful in this strategy, the GOP victory will be short-lived.  You can bet that there will be payback.

Update:

Sure enough, Minority Leader Schumer waxed eloquently over the loss of the filibuster.  The Dems want to be "compensated" for the treatment towards their guy, What-his-name.  If they don't get it, they will just add up the score for the payback when they get their next chance.

The GOP could run up the score, but if they don't get the knockout blow, there will be payback.

Nevertheless, the GOP should not go wobbly.  The Dems can say "no fair" all they like.  But since the New Deal, the direction has been leftward.  The GOP should use the power while they have it.


Update:

One more thing, and I'll leave it alone.  If they Dems didn't filibuster this nominee, the filibuster would not be nuked.  It would still exist.  Therefore, for the next nominee, it could still be used.  For whatever reason, they want to use it now, on this nominee.

You can believe that it is principle, or you can believe that it is just politics.  Frankly, if it were principle, they would suffer a political price for it.  I really think they expect to gain politically from this.

Just read their blogs and see that for yourself.



CSPAN 2

Flipping around the dial and came across the Senate debate on the Gorsuch nomination.  When John McCain was talking, I had the volume down.  Kinda wished that I didn't, as I would have liked to have heard what he said.  It would give a clue as to what his intentions were.  If McCain votes for the nuclear option, ( if it comes into play) then that would be significant.  He was one of the ones who opposed the nuclear option with respect to Bush's nominees that were filibustered back then.

Senator Cardin from Maryland is speaking now.  I listened for awhile, then he started in on some negative stuff, and that pretty much pegs him.  No need to listen further.

The Gorsuch nomination is a big deal.  Consider what would be the case today if Bork had been confirmed.  Instead of Bork, we got Kennedy, and along with that, homosexual marriage.

Kennedy laid the groundwork for the decision.  Without Kennedy, no homosexual marriages today.

But wait....

Bork died during Obama's term in 2012.  We may have had a liberal court these past four years.  Funny about that.  Considering that Obama wanted gun control, we may well have had an adverse decision on that by now.

Moral: Once you get into the what if's, you start to get into the weeds.  But the fact remains that this is a big deal.  What happens in the future is anybody's guess.


Rise and shine, 4.5.17

Feel a bit perky this morning.  Well, not really.  It is better than what it has been, so there's an improvement of sorts.

Not necessarily from the treatments at the center, though.  I had  lot of gas, so the doc prescribed some gas-x and it works.  Thank goodness for that.

Aside from what goes on here, the bigger picture gives reason for confidence.  The left has been caught in a lie again, and are hard at work trying to spin their way out of it.  Reminds me of the passage in Huck Finn, where the "King" and the "Duke" were in a jam when they were caught in a lie.  Huck noted how the King wouldn't give it up even then, and would tell even bigger lies.  In fact, so big that he might have fallen for them himself if he didn't know better.

I have written several times that I try to think in terms of principles.  What is the principle here?  Stick with the truth.  This may require a lot of faith and courage sometimes, because the liars seem to get the better of it a lot.  But the only way a liar wins is if you give up.  If you keep the faith, you will always win with the truth.  This is true because; down at the bottom, human beings are moral creatures.  If you can show a liar for what he is, you can beat him like a drum.

I truly believe that is what is happening to the left these days.  They have become so attached to the liar's way that it has made them easier to beat.  Their lies are losing force because they are becoming so transparent.  Even a six year old can see through them.  They aren't even good liars anymore!

Great days when that happens.  Better days could be ahead.



Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Will Perez's histrionics work?

Once again, it should be pointed out that Trump really did win the election.  Now that the DNC chief has refused to apologize, it should be pointed out to him that any reference to the contrary is in fact contrary to what actually happened.  Furthermore, given the attempts by the previous administration to derail the incoming administration before it could get established should be regarded with the most dire warning. 

This kind of talk must not be countenanced.  Neither should the continuing attempt to undermine the new administration.

Trump won the presidency.  This must be respected because it is the law.  It seems that Democrats have embraced a disrespect for the law because it seems to gain political advantages for them.  This must stop, or there will be no law, except the law of the jungle.

Nobody wins when that happens.


Handicapping "Russia-Gate"

Back in the late eighties, the idea occurred to me to try my hand at picking NFL games versus the spread.  I wrote some software, which utilized statistics in the hopes of being able to successfully pick the winners.  This really did not work the way that I wanted, but there was this one guy who seemed impressed with it.  There was a thought towards publishing it, but I decided not to.  It wasn't good enough, I thought.

Silly me.  Since when being honest was a good way to make money!  I could have marketed it as better than what it really was and never give a sucker an even break.  Maybe I could have made a fortune off that scam.

I have come to see the world as a mostly immoral or amoral place.  People are moral creatures, but mostly their morality is self-centered.  "What's fair" is usually relegated to the subjective mode, and becomes more like "what's in it for me".

Let me now segue into this current event, aka Russia-gate.  Supposedly, there is a scandal.  Supposedly, everyone gives a hoot about clean and honest government.  Supposedly, we want to bring justice to the crime, since there must have been one somewhere.  "Where there's smoke, there's fire" has already been uttered with respect to the immunity request sought by Flynn.  But a skeptical mind might look at it differently.   But this has nothing to do with the truth, or does it?

If it is politics, you can bet that truth isn't being sought.

There have been many times in which I mentioned the parable of the wolf v the lamb, and who wins that argument.  So, to handicap this thing, you have to know where the real power lies.  Does it lie with the media, which is the loudest and the noisiest, or elsewhere?

Noise does not equal power.  But it may be mistaken as such.  Hence, all the noise that the Dems are making about Trump and Russia may not be the deciding factor.  Or it might.  Just depends on how it is being perceived.

The late Herb Cohen said something about power.  By the way, Herb Cohen wrote the book You Can Negotiate Anything.  What Cohen said about power is that you have as much of it as you think you have.  Even if you have it, and don't believe you have it, then you don't have it.  On the other hand, if you don't have it, but believe you do, then you have it.  Completely subjective, I would say.  It has nothing to do with the objective reality of the situation.

The Democrats do not have a leg to stand on, if facts and truth mattered any.  Everything they are doing is pure bluff.  If Obama had anything on Trump, he would have used it.  So, he has nothing.  All the Dems can do is pretend that they have a story, which should be obvious that they don't.

The GOP has all the power wrapped up in their hands.  But if they get bluffed out of a winning hand, it is only because they let themselves be intimidated by the left wing noise machine.  They will have been like Cohen said: one who had power and believed as if he didn't, so he didn't.  The Dems will have the power because they believe they do even though they don't.

It really comes down to what the GOP is made of.  If they are made of chalk, they will fall apart.  If they have any backbone, they will be able to dispose of the Dems with the greatest of ease.

Unfortunately, I am not the amazing Kreskin, with the ESP to determine what is in the minds of these guys,  Their track record doesn't look promising though.

If I was a betting man, I couldn't handicap this one.  But I would like to favor the GOP because they have the better hand, in my estimation.


Monday, April 3, 2017

TeeVee show

Something I haven't seen before.  It is about this dude who goes around the country looking for great places to eat.

It is not necessarily high class restaurants.  It is for anybody, I suppose.   No need to dress up.

There are so many dishes that I cannot recall any of them.  Plus I forget really fast these days.

The show is on the food network. The show is called Diners, Drive ins and Dives.

Very unique dishes.  Stuff I haven't seen nor heard of.

The host actually goes the kitchen and watches them cook up these dishes.  Goes by way too fast to try any of these ideas yourself.  At any rate, I won't.

Not only that, he jumps all over the place.  Is this info really useful for anything? 

Critical sucker ain't I?

Okay, like Spock would say: "fascinating".


Can you sell ice to an Eskimo?

These people believe they can.  If you believe everything you read on the internet and see on the news, you could be made to believe anything.

Or you can take a deep breath and relax.  Not that you shouldn't care, or give up the fight.  To the contrary, you can fight even harder.

These people point at polls, but who conducts the polls, and who asks the questions?  If the main point of the poll is to influence people, then you can tell what is being done is being done toward that purpose--- to influence you.  So, you see a poll, then you might get discouraged and give up.  That would be a mistake.

All the polls said that Trump would lose.  That didn't happen.

But I wouldn't want to discount polls completely.  However, polls aren't everything they're cracked up to be.

You hear a lot about truth these days.  Who is telling it, and how do you know?  A lot of people don't seem to even ask that question.

The media didn't tell the truth about Obama, and still isn't.  Obama did indeed surveil this president.  His administration did indeed try to undermine and subvert it before it took office.  To believe otherwise would be to swallow this fraud being perpetrated today.  Nothing happened in that administration without Obama's approval.  There is a long litany of misdeeds that went undisclosed and unreported.  Now we are to believe these people?  Count me out.

If these liars pull this one off, you will never hear the truth again.  For they may be all about truth now, but if they stay in power, you can bet that truth will not be on their list of priorities. 

And that is the truth about these people.  You can put that one in the bank.


Have these people never heard of Gramsci?

Or, the Long March through the institutions?  In reading Instapundit, I get the sense that these people that post there don't get the idea that there is an attempt to deliberately undermine constitutional governance in America.

So, when they say the liberals are worried that people aren't interested in the truth, they are missing an important point.  The point is that left isn't interested in the truth.  There is no liberal version of the truth.  The left is at war with the culture and have been all along.  When at war, truth is the first casualty.

This business about Trump isn't about truth.  There's no truth being hidden, except probably that the previous administration is attempting a coup.  This explains all the spying and attempting to undermine the new administration.  The media isn't interested in this for a reason.

The left occupies the high ground of the culture.  They control the media, who in turn, controls the narratives that the people hear and see.  In addition, the media controls the educational establishment as well.  "Skulls full of mush" remain so.  That is the idea.  This is pure Gramscianism in action.

Too bad the anti-dote cannot be applied when those who could apply it are under the same spell.

"Ye shall know the truth and it shall set you free."  It is in the Gospel of John.  Read it and understand.

If the left were interested in the truth, they would be vitally interested in what Obama did.  But they aren't.


Update:  It is working, too.  Thanks to the relentless negative reporting, Trump is losing ground in the polls.  Even IBD is showing negative trends.  Is all lost, then?

I don't know, but I do know that Perez went too far.  If Trump is screwing up, it is in a failure to adequately defend himself against what is trying to bring him down.  But that may prove to be impossible.

Sunday, April 2, 2017

Plain and simple sedition

DNC chair claims Trump not elected.

Let's see if we can parse this.  Either we have the rule of law or not.  If so, there are fifty states and the District of Columbia.  Each certifies its election results and submits them to Congress.  The electoral votes are counted, according to law, and the result is finally certified.  This procedure yielded Donald Trump, who was sworn in as the nation's president.  All legal and upfront well established for over two hundred years.

The Democrats want to overturn the election, evidently.  There is no precedent for this in American history.  Even when the Southern states seceded, they did not dispute that Lincoln won.

But the South did secede and Lincoln had the authority to restore the union by force, which he did.

You'd think these guys would know better than to continue down the path they are going.  If they continue, there will be civil discord on a magnitude not seen in many years.  Perhaps not seen since the sixties.  There may well be bloodshed.  It may take that to restore order.

You don't know which way it will all go, but I would bet that people would not support what Perez and the rest of the Dems are trying to pull off.

Either they are bluffing, or they are not.  I say call their bluff, and let the chips fall where they may.

Either we have the rule of law, or the rule of the mob.  You will have to choose.

Update:

People might be comforted by the RNC chair response, but I consider it to be weak.  Time to read them the riot act.



Trump and the Desire to Be Loved - by Robert Ringer

Trump and the Desire to Be Loved - by Robert Ringer: I still don’t know whether Donald Trump’s presidency is going to crash and burn or if he’s going to go down as one of the greatest presidents in history. With a mouth like his, coupled with a remarkable lack of self-control and an incomparable talent for making people angry, anything is possible. If I were …



comment:



Limbaugh has said pretty much the same thing.



I say that Trump is trying to do what is right.  Unfortunately, that may not be possible under the present state of affairs.  Something has to change.




E equals m c squared is what?!?

You've got to get a load of this.  This billy sitch compares the famous equation to some sort of male sexual insecurity.

You gotta be shi**ing me.

The complete video is below:


The author of this video was trying to help the cause of thorium reactors, but the title looks like it is the opposite.  What he is doing is presenting the opposition arguments against thorium.  If all they got is arguments like this numbskull woman, then they have no argument at all.  Actually, all the arguments presented here are basically dishonest.