Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Wednesday WTFs

A blog in which I communicate my wonderment to the wider world. Contrary to the popular opinion of my other 36 personalities, I do NOT have a total handle on Life, and there ARE a few puzzlements left to me. Here are a few of them.

WTF, category Irony:

 The Secret Service scandal was discovered when a disagreement on how much a prostitute should charge for her services came to light.  

She was asking for $800.00. The Secret Service Agent offered $30.00.

 

How ironic is it that the only person in Washington willing to cut spending gets fired?

(H/T to the Coyote Kid).

WTF, category The Whole Truth:

  "If you are not legally and morally justified in taking someone's life, you have no business whatsoever pointing a lethal weapon at any part of their body."

What Tam said. Enough said. Via Uncle.

WTF, category Whacky Terbaccy:

Advocates of Whacky Terbaccy legalization (and it's already legal, with a few formalities, under Oregon's loose Medical Marijuana laws) just elected the Top Cop in Oregon, Retired Judge Ellen Rosenblum, to be Oregon AG. I served many a time as a Court Deputy in her court when she was a circuit Judge in my county. Good mind, sharp intuition, but it's a little disturbing that she seems to have been funded in the crucial late stages of her campaign almost entirely by money from the potheads. I'm anti-pothead, myself, having seen the problems firsthand that this minor drug causes (same level of problems as alcohol, really). Additionally, the fact that Socialist George Soros has poured tens of millions of dollars into MJ legalization efforts to further his Stalinist ideas of "social justice" tells me that the biggest downside of more MJ smoked by more people won't just be a shortage of Cheetos, it will likely be a "benevolent" Big Government smiling down on the stoned masses, knowing that stoners can't do much mischief, and when they try, they're easily defeated.

WTF, category Zombie Apocalypse:

I'm puzzled by the national fascination with the subject of Zombies, and the only explanation I can offer to end my puzzlement is that the craze is the result of a backlash against Unicorns, and things like Unicorn Dust (like the Big Government, Unicorn Dust falling on things makes them magically free), Unicorn Farts, which like the Green Faeries of AlGore's invention, are a majikal counter to Glow-bull Warmening.

WTF, category Take Down Guns:

Why aren't ALL sporting carbines made in take-down models? Better late than never for this model, though.

 

Tuesday trespass...

...wherein we show some more examples of how the Left tramples on traditional American values.

Example One: Nanny Medicine. Watching the noon news on Channel eight here in Stumptown, I heard the newsbabe try to explain a new definition of "obese", which, BTW, USED to have the meaning of more than 30 pounds over ideal weight. The "new" definition of "obese" apparently means flabby-looking, because the reporter explained that one can be "obese" AT one's ideal weight. This is nothing more than a blatant attempt to use scare tactics to scare people into being underweight, or becoming gym rats, or both. I reject it.

Example Two: Qualification of Presidents: Obama does not meet the qualification listed in the Constitution because he is NOT a "natural born citizen" as required, then defined in the SCOTUS case Minor v. Happersett. In that case, a "natural born citizen" was defined as, "all children born in a country of parents who were it's citizens". There is no argument that Barack Hussein Obama was not born of parents who were both citizens. There is argument that he was born here. US District Court Judge Anderson of TN  has cited Minor v. Happersett as being on point. Sheriff Arpaio thinks that this is important enough to let superior courts decide whether Obama should even be on ballots across the country. Read about this new angle on the "birther" controversy here. I support Sheriff Joe in his quest to have the truth come out. This Nation could stand the minor constitutional crisis caused by discovering that Obama was never qualified to hold office, at this point, but if Obama wins another term of office, and THEN a court tells him he is not qualified, there is a high potential for a MAJOR Constitutional crisis. A gun sort of crisis, if you know what I mean, Verne.

Example Three: The Fourth Estate as Obama shills. It seems to me that there are rules about this. At what point do the rules get enforced? When is someone going to start accumulating all the minutes and hours of TeeVee time used strictly to re-elect Obama, and the column-miles of newsprint used for the same reason, and decree that said media either have to give equal time to the Romnizer or be classed for tax purposes and purposes of license renewals as political shills?

Example Four: We're not Los Angeles, and don't need their air pollution rules in Oregon. It seems that City of Portland garbage rates are about to rise by almost 10% just so the garbage collectors can buy new trucks that meet the most stringent emissions rules. Those would be Kalifornica's rules, which are written for the extreme example of the Los Angeles Basin airshed, arguably the worst place a large city has been built, on the entire planet. The topography and local micro-climate makes it impossible to get rid of man OR nature-generated air pollution, and rules for emissions were written to consider those facts, but then, those rules have been foisted off on the entire rest of the Nation, which does not need them because the rest of the Nation does not have the airshed problems that Los Angeles has. No matter, the insane Portland City Council, led by the Gay Pedophile Mayor, Sam Adams, brought in the CA rules, and so all the trucks have to be changed out. No matter that the current trucks still have life left, the haulers must buy new ones, and oh, while you're at it, City Council, did you remember to mandate that those trucks use "bio-diesel" fuel at $7.00+ per gallon? That stupid rule, which the City Fleet is, itself, saddled with, would make the perfect capper for this insane additional expense in an already insanely-expensive city.

Example Five: When the history books tell us that Liquor Prohibition failed as a social-control experiment, let's try it all over again! The self-same insane City of Portland, which has forced foodcart entrepreneurs into what used to be called by the Nazis, "lagers" or concentrations, smarted recently when the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, acting on their legal counsel's advice that such establishments, once forced to tie themselves down, had to be treated, for purposes of liquor licensing, as brick-and-mortar restaurants. They issued a liquor license (beer and wine only) to one food cart, in the lager known locally as "Cartlandia", no doubt, after the TV series "Portlandia". So the city is mightily cheese(burgered)ed off, and has filed suit against the State liquor agency. The Rivrdog blog, no real friend of the OLCC, nevertheless sides with them on this one, and hopes their legal beagles turn into legal pitbulls and rip the City a new one.

That's enuff for today. Suffice it to say I do NOT forgive these trespasses.

The "Single-Payer" Fallacy

Even the most die-hard liberal seems to believe that the SCOTUS is about to either gut or utterly destroy Obamacare, so there's angst all over the media.

Too bad it's misplaced angst, for angst can be a good thing if it leads to logical solutions.

The misplaced angst here is the failure of the entire liberal side to look at the One Big Question* in the single-payer scheme of health insurance.

That question is simply this: shouldn't any mandated insurance plan have, at it's core, efficiency in payment? Let us not forget these points:

An insurance plan is just that, and that only: a plan to arrange payment for a service: rebuilding your home after a fire or other loss, rebuilding YOU after an illness. All those restorative services have COST associated with them, so PAYMENT is required.

It almost seems like liberals think that a health insurance plan must first change health care delivery. No, it doesn't have to, all it has to do is arrange PAYMENT for services. This is where Obamacare over-reached, it attempted to reconfigure health care delivery, then pay for the new delivery system.

Obamacare was a deliberate attempt of the President and his party to use health care services, or the control of them, to drag the USA into a new political system, socialism. You see, the health care insurance system we have now is not mandatory. People can and do forgo health care. They can and do shop around for the best price for health care AND health insurance, and their choices lead directly to the efficiencies in the health care marketplace. The LACK of efficiency in the health care marketplace is due entirely to non-payers. Yes, a health-care services bill is the easiest one to refuse to pay. All you have to do is declare that you can't afford to pay, and the bill will either be put off, or reduced, or some arrangement made to pay it from public funds.

The lack of certainty in payment for health care services causes the ineffiencies. To solve that one, relatively easy problem, Obamacare proposed to re-write the entire idea of delivering AND paying for health care services. This is the equivalent of using a SWAT team to bring an overtime-parking violator to justice.

BTW, your Rivrdog won't keep you in suspense. The way to solve the problem of uninsureds in the system is to have a pool of money for payment. This has been done in the auto insurance industry almost since the start of auto insurance some 80 years or so ago. It's called "assigned risk", and the system works well. If you are in the assigned risk pool, you pay higher premiums, but you get insurance, the equivalent of using a SWAT team to arrest an overtime-parking violator. The higher premiums encourage you to do whatever it takes to improve yourself so that you get OUT of the Assigned Risk pool.

All the Feds had to do to execute Universal Health Care was establish the Assigned Risk Pool for those payers who couldn't find normal insurance, and make paying for medical care the same level of debt that everything else is. Establishing that pool would have required only a small fraction of the bureaucracy and a small fraction of the money which Obamacare demands from us in it's various forms. Assigned risk wouldn't have imposed insurance, it just would have paid for all those who don't have insurance to get it.

The health insurance system in this country works. It can and should be made more efficient, but most of the job of making it more efficient would be done by establishing the Assigned Risk pool.

The Assigned Risk solution isn't glitzy though, it doesn't require a "Czar" to run it, and it certainly wouldn't require the pogrom against health care that is now in place and hopefully, will soon be erased by the SCOTUS.

*******************************

* The "One Big Question" is a construct of Joe Huffman, who blogs frequently, here. He says that most propaganda can be unraveled by the simple technique of digging out the One Big Question, and examining it for the truth.

How Bromantic!

The "First Gay President" magazine cover.

H/T to Uncle

Okay then, now the realpolitik: this is a lesson in how not to do politics.

First, take this to the bank: the gay community is not a serious asset for the President. He already had them in his pocket, because, except for the few "Log Cabin" gay rethuglicans, they're already dummycrats. He's not converting anyone with this message. Are there any lazy gays who need energizing? Again, maybe a paltry few, but most I know are VERY politically active for the Left already, so the Obumbler didn't pick up many votes by "energizing" that base, either.

Second, he HAS succeeded in energizing the GOP base with this issue, in a way that the Romnizer could only have had wet dreams about, and there may well be some Christian or Jewish undecided voters who will push the Romnoid button for sure because of this. My guess: far more of those than any pro-gay votes just changed loyalties.

Net loss of votes for Obama? Well, we aren't voting this week (except in the primary in OR, and Obummer is not seriously opposed here), but if the national polls are to be believed, the Wahn just lost 7% to Romniddy. More important, five Democratic Senators runnng for re-election have just spent the weekend distancing themselves from The First Gay President.

Many more gems like that, and Obama will retire 1-20-13. If he does, his first term and his campaign for re-election will become THE textbook case of how NOT to do politics.

Now, which one of his Two Left Feet will Romney trip over this week?

Put on those green eyeshades...

Yep, it's time to visualize the US economy, if you can. Yes, it's a hard job, what with both the Government and the Banks try to out-do each other in generating smoke to puff up our hoo-hoos and to hide the facts indicating that we are in big trouble.

This article explains the dire state of the economy as well as any I've read lately, though, so go there, then come back here for the discussion.

Fresh coffee (might better have some "fortifier" in it though) is now in order, and keep the Tums handy.

Note in the article, that withdrawals of money from circulation (re-financing to lower interest rates) have certain effects, one of them being that there is a multiplier involved. This article puts that multiplier at 10, but doesn't give support for that figure, so it might be less. I remember from ECON 203 (Money and Banking Theory) way back in the early 1960s when this level of deficit spending horrified everyone with a finance education, that such multiples existed because of the interdependence of all the houses of finance. It works like this:

Financial House A makes a loan to a consumer, and then sells that paper to Financial House B. The Government backs, or guarantees the performance of the loan (didn't back when I learned this stuff, but does now). So, B owns the paper, but for various reasons which are over my head, A is allowed to show that loan on their books for a while past the point that it sold (possibly because of the legal liability involved with originating the loan). That's a multiplier. Any money on the books for either A or B is creditworthy for those financial houses to borrow against, so that's also a multiplier. The money the houses borrow then has multipliers, etc, etc. House of cards, but hey, I didn't invent this system, so don't shoot me. Suffice it to say that the entire financial world operates on the basis of this shadow money as if every penny of it existed and could be produced on demand.

The article talks about "reserves". Substitute the words "Actual Cash" for reserves. In Europe recently, reserves had been allowed to fall to below 2 percent of available credit. That's right, the banks were able to play their games on TWO PERCENT MARGIN. Bear some history in mind. The Crash of 1929 was caused, in large part, by people playing the US equities market on TEN PERCENT margin. Well, Europe is considering raising the margin requirement a percent or two, but that raise is getting bad reviews from Socialist France, which wants to print it's way out of it's current financial malaise. In the mose austere of circumstances, it is unlikely that Europe will agree to reserves of over 5%.

Then, there is the well-known factor of panic. In fact, stock market crashes used to be called "panics" in the history books. We saw a modest panic in 2008, but despite that the equity losses barely got down to 50%, it took 4 years for the market to regain those losses (the Real Estate market has yet to regain ANY losses of equity).

So, what does this mean for us, Campers?

What it means is that the entire civilized world has no financial confidence left, no confidence that the system will heal itself as it has done before. That sets the stage for another panic, and since the actual money level behind Government and Bank debt has gotten smaller, the next crash WILL be much more severe. It is likely that entire governments, and most, if not all Banks will be bankrupted in the next crash (actually, most current Governments meet the fiduciary definition of bankrupt NOW). Every government bankruptcy creates a multiplied panic, and if enough of them occur together, the world's economy goes over a cliff.

Yee-haw, free falling economies! Can it happen here? It did before, most notably in 1929, and as previously stated, the reserves were much bigger then.

The real question for YOU, Campers, is, Can you farm? Can you be responsible for your own food, shelter, health and safety?

If any part of that answer is NO, your future is as bleak as your Government's.

You know what you need to do. Get busy.

It must be an election year...

There's flip-flopping in progress...el Presidente, who was for "traditional marriage" yesterday, isn't for it today.

Look, if you want to declare your love for another person ot even another member of another species, fine. If you want to share your fortune with that person/whatever, fine.

"Marriage" is specifically defined as a union of two humans, of opposite sex, of other appropriate pre-requisites, as approved by the State, and that's where the rub is, that "approved by the State" part. Since the Forefathers could never have forseen the mainstreaming of homosexuality as a cultural norm, we have to forgive them for being so obtuse about what marriage is and isn't.

It's time to update the law to the cultural norm, though. Here's the Rivrdog solution:

Congress needs to send out an Amendment to the US Constitution that wipes the word and meaning of "marriage" off of all law books, substitutes the word and meaning for "union" in it's place, and leaves the definition of unions between peoples up to Congress. This removes religion from the question entirely. 

In the Forefather's day, religion had a place in the moral lives of every American citizen, and the religious definition of marriage was perfectly acceptable. Since Federal courts have given their imprimatur to "civil unions", there is no more place in our culture for a religious definition of them to be the law of the land.

You see, Campers, we have this little clause prohibiting "establishment" of religion into law. There is no better definition of "establishment" than accepting the religious definition of Marriage instead of our constitutional Court definition.

Establishment of religion has it's place, and that place is in our hearts and minds, not our books of Law.

Go directly there

...to BorePatch's blog, and read this screed.

Yes, it's come to this pass. History will show that the Second American Revolution actually started before Obama's second term started...

H/T to Uncle

BTW, if you are into conflict management planning as I am, you might consider this date: Wednesday, the Seventh of November, 2012. That is the day after the election, and assuming Obama is re-elected, that is the day his "complete-the-dictatorship" program starts. Assuming you are going to resist that dictatorship, YOU will have to be prepared to begin your resistance on that date. If you are on the other side, and will be joining Obama IN his dictatorship, that is the date, after which you will begin laying your life on the line for Obama, every day until one side or the other wins unconditional victory.

Today, we are on the Seventh Day of the Fifth month of 2012. There are exactly six months, one half a calendar year, left for you to prepare for this conflict, both physical and mental preparations. The world of your comfort, as you presently see it, ends in six months. Six months from now, you will be fighting, for or against Freedom, right here in your United States of America.

Thursday Potpourri

Item: The Right comes up on the wrong side of this idea, that all OTC (Over The Counter) drugs are a better deal than prescription (R/X) drugs of the identical formulation. Example: Omeprazole, aka, Prilosec. It's been out for decades, and it's been OTC for at least a decade, but the price is still on the order of a dollar per pill, when by now, it ought to be down to a dime or less. There are other examples. What is going to happen with this FDA ruling is that some widely-prescribed drugs that are losing their patents (patents timing out) and would have become very inexpensive for sufferers to use, will now NOT get cheap, and their OTC prices will be maintained at artificially high levels. So, just moving a drug out of the R/X class and into the OTC class is not a guarantee of saving anyone any money, and in fact, some of these patent-expired drugs will show steep price rises when they hit the OTC counters. Mostly, the drug companies benefit from this, not the patients. Oh, and that thing in the article about having to go to see the doc every time a R/X is adjusted? BullTweet! You CALL your doctor's charge nurse, and the nurse handles that. I do that all the time and there is never a bill for it.

Item: The case against Roger Clemens. If you know baseball, and I'm a fan, you know that there was a sea change in top-line pitchers about 10-15 years ago. The very best pitchers, like Clemens, USED to be "location" pitchers. They could consistently put the ball within a couple of inches of where they wanted it, and scouting told them where they wanted it. Now, the best pitchers are "power" pitchers, who have the ability to throw 95 mph fastballs and sliders, at ordinary accuracy, for 6 innings or better. "Location" pitchers are now closers, who only have to throw for two innings at most, never more than 35-40 pitches total. That just the evolution of the game, but Clemens was caught up in it. As the best "location" pitcher on the mound, the game passed him by because he couldn't toss the screamers time after time. He tried to pump himself into better shape via chemicals, so as to prolong his career at the top of the heap. I can't blame him for that, and the idiotic doping trial is just that, idiotic.

Item: Afghanistan. I had occasion, night before last, to listen to a local college Professor expound on the 'Stan. Very knowledgeable guy, Prof. Grant Farr of Portland State University, spent a lot of time over there, including through the Soviet occupation. His take, in a nutshell, is that Obama's Grand Plan won't work. Why it won't work is that Obama doesn't understand the nature of the country. First of all, Afghanistan is NOT a "country" in any real understanding of the term. It's a region of three main tribal groups, each having major problems with the other, and each being unlikely to ever cede ANY authority to the others within it's own tribal influence area. If that wasn't bad enough, our whole "nation building" exercise in the 'Stan is based on building a modern national Army which can hold it's own, and hold the Nation together. The major problem is that there is 70% total illiteracy in the 'Stan, and of the Army recruits, maybe one in ten can read and write, but probably not. You simply can't raise a modern Army from recruits who can't read or write, and expecially from those who not only can't read or write, but don't want to learn to do so, lest they be labeled as blasphemous by their local imams, who DO read and write, and want to hold that over their parishoners' heads. It all adds up to FAIL, just as it added up to FAIL for every major nation which has tried in the past century (we are the third world power in the past 100 years to try to "civilize" the 'Stan).

Item: STFU, Christie. Yep, others look at Tubby and see the same potential horror story I've seen.

Final Item: I realize that Zoos are places where humans may learn about other animal species, but you have to have just a LITTLE smarts before you go. Consider NOT dressing your little tyke to look like a baby zebra (prey animal) and parking him in front of the lion's den...

Romney kisses Bloomberg's ring: a 2A fail?

According to this, via Uncle, Romney made an unannounced trip to visit Mayors Against the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights prexy, Bloomberg, yesterday.

The subject of gun control reportedly WAS discussed.

So, if the Romnoid was there to kiss the NYC Pope's ring and get an endorsement, what part of gun control did he just agree to follow Bloomberg's lead on?

This blog is now putting Romney in the anti-2A camp, despite his schmooze at the NRA meetings a while back. Unless and until Romney will publish a transcript of the entire discussion, including both his and Bloomberg's words on the subject of gun control, this blog now takes an anti-Romney position.

As I have said, sometimes it's better to have the enemy you know on the field in front of you than the ally you don't know on the field behind you.

Chris Christie, Islamist supporter

Don't take MY word for it, take this article at Rantburg to heart.

I've chastized Chris Christie in the past for sitting on his "record" of hammering public employee unions, all the while cozying up to other unions (dockworkers, for example), and yet trying to tell us that he is totally conservative, totally anti-union.

This info (not new, actually, just previously uncollated) now shows another side of Christie that seems to confirm my suspicions.

Christie is no conservative, and the only cause he serves well is Chris Christie's.

Take that to the bank.

Mitt Romney, if you choose this guy, I not only won't vote FOR you, I'll vote AGAINST you. Yes, I would rather have Obama than a Mitt/Chris combo. I know Obama, and how to handle him. You can't predict a jerk like Christie. Today, he sucks up to Islamists. Who will he suck up to next? Today he is a gun controller. Will he be put in charge of the Great Disarmament during a Mitt Romney Presidency?