Friday, August 31, 2018

Busy Week Upcoming

My survival of the upcoming week might be in question. It will be busy.

There will be no fewer than four "must watch" college football games. San Diego State at Stanford, Washington at Auburn, Michigan at Notre Dame and Miami at LSU. I may also record Louisville at Alabama and West Virginia at Tennessee for later viewing. I watched Northwestern at Purdue last night.

For things with wheels, there is the Southern 500 at Darlington, perhaps my favorite race track. Indycar races on the road course at Portland, and Formula 1 has the Belgian Grand Prix.

My Fantasy Football draft is Tuesday evening, and the NFL season opens with two of my favorite teams, Atlanta at Philadelphia on Thursday night.

My wife may sprain something rolling her eyes, and the cat is nervous that it's going to be a long football season.

Wednesday, August 29, 2018

Ready, Aim, Fire

It’s sort of like shooting yourself in the foot and then bragging about how you proved that the gun works as designed and punches holes in things.

Duncan Hunter has held his Republican congressional seat for five years, after his father held it for 28 years. The Democrats have a chance to take it away from him, given that he has been indicted for “campaign violations,” consisting of spending some $250K in campaign funds for personal purposes.

So they nominate a person named Ammar Campa-Najjar, who is of Mexican and Arab heritage. Not altogether surprisingly, some two months after he was indicted, Duncan Hunter is leading in the polls by eight points, and Democrats are complaining that CA-50 is populated by a bunch of racist pigs.

Well, yes, it is, but the Democrats knew that before they nominated this guy. So they made their point about how “socially inclusive” they are, and they made a die-hard “red district” in rural southern California look bad, but what did it really do for the Democrats in a practical sense? They will have one fewer vote in Congress, and have diminished their chances of passing their agenda.

Much, too, like the driver who knows he has the right of way, so decides to just hit the guy who is running the red light because that guy is in the wrong. “He was right, dead right as he sped along, but he’s just as dead as if he’d been wrong.”

Saturday, August 25, 2018

Over-Reaction

Conor Daly, usually an Indycar driver but taking a turn in the Xfinity series today, had his sponsorship by Lilly (a major pharmaceutical company) withdrawn due to a “racial slur” uttered by his father in 1991, some ten years before Conor was born. Tony Kanaan, a fellow Indycar driver, was the only one to comment, calling the action “ridiculous.”

Thomas Frieden, former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was arrested Friday in New York City on charges of “sexual abuse, forcible touching and harassment.” The only specifics I have been able to find is that he put his hand on a woman’s posterior, on the outside of her clothing, without her permission.

I certainly do not condone that behavior, but does it justify being arrested by the FBI, having your hands cuffed behind your back, and being perp walked out of your place of business in front of the media?

He has not denied the charge, probably because he knows a denial would only result in nine or ten more women piling on. When this movement started I was certainly sympathetic, and supportive, but it has gotten out of control. It is no longer about justice, it is vendetta.

Friday, August 24, 2018

Here We Go Again

For many years we have been being told that modest consumption of alcohol is actually good for you, improving heart health, and that everyone should drink a couple of glasses of wine daily. (Except alcoholics, of course, but they don't say that.) Now a "large new report" is screeching at us that actually "there is no safe level of alcohol" consumption.

Just as they did with coffee, back and forth. Why do we pay any attention to any of these studies?

Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Modern Morality

In celebrating the conviction (by Michael Cohen's confession) and pending impeachment of President Trump for "campaign finance violation" we are turning the victim of blackmail into a criminal and not only giving the blackmailer a walk, but are booking her on national tours in furtherance of the display of her pornographic talents. This is today's form of democracy.

Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Identity Politics

In the past few weeks Democrats have celebrated the following victories in primary elections. They have nominated two Muslim women. They have put the first transgender woman on the ballot for mayor of a major city. They have put two female candidates for US Senate on the ballot in California, for the second such election in a row. They have put a 28-year-old bartender named Ocasio-Cortez on the ballot in a district which is 68% Puerto Rican, who professes to be a Democratic Socialist, unseating a three-term Democrat.

Do you see a trend here? They are celebrating not the policies which these candidates espouse, but their identities. They are not electing candidates who espouse policies which will benefit the nation as a whole. They elect candidates because they are identities which are championed by the Democratic Party: women, minority, LGBTQ, Muslim…

If you are male, you cannot win in a Democratic district. If you are white, you cannot win in a Democratic district. If you are straight, you cannot win in a Democratic district. If you identify as the same sex that is on your birth certificate, you cannot win in a Democratic district. If you are Catholic, do not even bother to run in a Democratic district.

Notice, in that last paragraph, I never mentioned policies.

Update: Saturday, 7:30am
"...but what," Bruce asks, "are they going to actually do?"

You miss the point entirely, my boy. They are not going to do anything.

Democratic politics is not about doing anything, it is about being.

It is about being special (gay, female, trans, etc.) and about not being Trump.

Sunday, August 12, 2018

Democracy Speaks?

I read an article yesterday in which the impeachment of Donald Trump was mentioned and, for at least the third time in the past month, read that “Nancy Pelosi has taken that option off the table.” It continues to strike me as odd.

First, Democrats have to win control of the House of Representatives. They say that is going to happen in 2018, but they also said they were certain of winning the White House in 2016, and we all know how that turned out.

Then Nancy Pelosi has to be elected by her peers as Speaker of the House, and that appears to be by no means the slam dunk that she seems to think it is. Granted, the link is to Fox News, but there are others. The Democratic Party is increasingly being influenced by the Ocasio-Cortez crowd and they are, to say the least, not enamored of the likes of Nancy Pelosi.

Finally, even if Democrats do take the house and Pelosi does become Speaker, how is that her choice to make? Unless 434 other members of the House have a voice in making that decision, then one would have to say that the Democratic Party is about the least democratic organization in politics.

Thursday, August 09, 2018

Oh, Good Thinking

The endless slog to expand the San Diego convention center refuses to die. Despite grocery shoppers being accosted daily for two months no matter which store they patronized or at what hour they did their shopping ("Are you a San Diego voter?"), the effort to get the convention center expansion "initiative" on the ballot for the upcoming election failed to get enough signatures and did not make the ballot. Cry me a river.

At least not as a "public initiative," which would require just a 50% affirmative vote to pass. The City Government is considering putting it on the ballot as a government proposal, which would require a two-thirds affirmative vote for passage. Consider the wisdom of that. It could not get enough signatures to get on the ballot, but the city thinks it might get two thirds of voters to vote "yes."

Of course, we already knew that we are governed at all levels by idiots.

Wednesday, August 08, 2018

Two Things Which Baffle Me

First is the endless screeching about who hacked the DNC servers without ever paying the slightest attention to the indisputable fact revealed by that hack, which is that the Hillary Clinton faction clearly and blatantly rigged the Democratic primary election.

We are outraged and terrified in equal proportion by the Russians meddling in our elections, but both political parties are utterly indifferent to the Democrats doing so.

Second is to wonder at the present screeching about the Russians continuing to meddle in elections, and touting the heinous degree to which they are doing so already in the 2018 midterm election. What is to be gained by all of that fear mongering?

I can see Democrats trying to discredit an election after they lost it (well, not really, but there is at least some logic to it), but why discredit in advance an election which you claim that you expect to win?

What Makes This One Special?

The national news has featured daily updates on a missing girl for the past week or so. There does not seem to be anything special about the circumstances under which she disappeared; her boyfriend was in a different state on vacation at the time, she did not disappear from a party… She just went out on an errand and never came back.

From the day that the story first began airing I have been wondering what sets this case apart from what has to be thousands of other missing person cases and sure enough, one reporter today commented that she is one of more than 88,000 current open missing persons cases.

So what makes her worthy of daily updates on the national news, with no mention of any of the other 87,999 cases? Perhaps it has to do with the families of those other cases, who are not sufficiently wealthy to offer a $100,000 reward for information as to the whereabouts of their missing family members.

Sometimes the way this nation functions is a profound embarrassment to me.

Saturday, August 04, 2018

The Law Is An Ass

I don’t recall the source of the title. Probably Shakespeare.

Congress voted on this DACA law twice, and both times failed to pass it. Obama, as part of his highly unconstitutional “if Congress won't act then I will” policy, made it law by executive order. Democrats applauded wildly, while Republicans and others who can read the constitution, which included me, decried it as executive overreach.

Trump then created an executive order canceling Obama’s executive order, thereby bringing DACA to a halt. The principle behind his thinking was that all presidents are equal, and that what one president can do by executive order, another president can undo by executive order.

Apparently not. A judge this week ordered the DACA program reinstated, saying that the Trump administration had “failed to justify eliminating it.” Apparently, the fact that it was created by an executive order written for the specific purpose of thwarting the will of Congress did not constitute justification.

Not that I think DACA is a bad program, and I was thoroughly pissed off at Congress for failing to pass it, but I’m something of a fan of this nation’s constitution, and was horrified by Obama’s blatant contempt for that document with his “if Congress won’t act then I will” policy.

Friday, August 03, 2018

Worth Notice

Well, probably not, actually, but Johnny Manziel ("Johnny Football" of Texas A&M fame) made his first start at quarterback for the Montreal Alouettes in the Canadian Football League today, and left the game in the third quarter after throwing four interceptions, with the Alouettes down by a score of 41-3.

The Rest of the Story

Leslie Moonves is being charged with all sorts of sexual improprieties, none of them very recent, and demands are being made that he step down as head of CBS or that he be suspended by the network. As is today’s normal, he is presumed guilty, not only before conviction in a court of law, but before even being charged by any legal entity which could bring him into a courtroom.

What the media is not reporting is that Moonves is in a battle with Shari Redstone, controlling stockholder of CBS and of Viacom. She wants to merge the two giant media companies, while Moonves does not. Can there be much doubt that these accusations are a campaign by Redstone to discredit Moonves in order to achieve her corporate goals, and is it surprising that the media which is financially controlled by her is assisting her in that campaign?

This is the nature of the justice system in The United States today.

Thursday, August 02, 2018

Medicare Adventure

I received an email from Medicare informing me that my new card had been mailed and that if I had not yet received it I should call 1-800-MEDICARE.

The first problem is that the word "Medicare" contains eight letters, so the phone number they gave me contains one too many digits. On some phones that creates no problem because the phone simply quits accepting numbers after you enter eleven digits, but on mine you enter the number and push "Talk," at which point the phone rudely tells you the number is invalid. You then have to determine which digit Medicare intended for you to omit. It isn't rocket science to decide they intended for you to omit the last one, but...

Then you have to go through having a lengthy conversation with a recording, in which it tells you what you "may say." I hate those furshlugginer things. It didn't tell me I could say for it to perform a reproductive act on itself, so I refrained from doing so and finally got a human being.

It turned out my new card had, in fact, not been mailed and I decided not to ask why they had sent me an email saying that it had been mailed if it had actually not been. I was trying to stay focused on what I wanted to accomplish and was, in any case, quite sure that not only would he not have an answer but that the question itself would create a serious distraction.

Even without the distraction, things went nowhere but downhill. We live on a street named Caminito Pintoresco, which is Spanish for "picturesque little street." It actually fits the name fairly well, and it's a great place to live, but it would be better if it was on, maybe First Avenue or something, because nobody outside of San Diego can even pronounce our street name, let alone make any sense of the spelling. (Tucson AZ gets ridiculous with street names, by the way, coming up with things like Calle sin Vaca, which means "street without a cow.")

At the person’s request, I recited our address and he said that the address he had was on “Caminito Pintores,” with no “co” on the end and that perhaps that explained why the new card was not mailed.

I’m like, “What?” and he went on that if the address “does not match” then they will not mail the card. I asked him what the address had to match with, and the conversation deteriorated into gibberish, because he only had the one address and had no idea what it might need to match against, only that it needed to “match.”

He finally abandoned the idea of it matching anything and said that if the address was “wrong” they would not mail the card, but did not explain how they would know it was wrong, or what he meant by “wrong.” Nonexistant? No such street?

I addressed the fact that if the database field did not allow enough characters for the long address, then Caminito could be abbreviated Cmto to allow the name Pintoresco to be fully spelled out, but he assured me that was not the issue because they had many addresses which were much longer than mine.

He explained that the address they were using to mail my Medicare card was in the Social Security database and that I would have to contact Social Security in order to change it, and we left it at that.

There are, however, so many things wrong with that explanation that it’s hard to know where to start, the first being the question of why Medicare is using the Social Security database for the addresses to mail Medicare cards, when Medicare is not part of the Social Security Administration, it is part of Health and Human Services.

Next is that Social Security mails things to me all the time, using the address that SSA has for me on “Caminito Pintores” and stuff they mail to me reaches me just fine, so I have no idea why Medicare would think that is a “wrong” or unusable address.

Medicare has my address and mails statements to me on a regular basis, and the street name they use is “Caminito Pintoresco,” which might be beginning to shed some light on the “address match” issue. It may be that Medicare requires that the Social Security address match the Medicare address, although why they would do that is a bit baffling.

I went to the Social Security website and changed my address so that Medicare can send me a card, which is sort of like going to the Del Taco website to order a Big Mac, and saw that Social Security does indeed have my street name as “Caminito Pintores.” (Except that it’s in all caps which I’m not going to use here.)

So I attempted to add the “co” on the end and discovered that what they have is the maximum allowable in the field. The street address is limited to 22 characters, which is utterly ridiculous. Probably half the street addresses in the nation are longer than that.

It also proves that the rocket scientist I was talking to at Medicare was as clueless as I thought he was, and that they certainly do not have “lots of addresses longer than” mine.

I went ahead and changed the street on my Social Security address to “Cmto Pintoresco,” because it’s neater that way, but that would not seem to help in getting me a Medicare card because it still does not match the address that Medicare has for me.

I have absolutely no clue as to where to go from here.

Wednesday, August 01, 2018

Indirect Measurement

When I want to know how much I weigh I step on a scale, read the dial, and find that I weigh 235 pounds. Plus or minus a little from time to time, but I stay close to that. Same as I weighed in high school, by the way, although distributed a bit differently,

If the government wanted to know how much I weigh they would launch me in a rocket into orbit around the moon, then use my orbital speed around the moon and distance from the lunar surface to calculate my weight. They would then botch the process entirely by adding the phase of the moon into the calculation and come up with the answer that my “seasonally adjusted” weight is 428#.

It’s called “indirect measurement,” and it not only gets the wrong answer much of the time, it’s usually incredibly more expensive to perform than a direct measurement would be. Such as launching me into lunar orbit to determine, inaccurately, how much I weigh.

If the government wanted to know how many people are employed, they could go to the Social Security database and query, “how many unique numbers had transactions?” in a certain period, and they would have their answer in a few minutes. They would have to tap a couple other computers in similar fashion to get the count of government workers who are not subject to Social Security withholding, but the process could be made all-inclusive quite easily.

It is claimed that they cannot do that due to “privacy reasons,” but that is utter nonsense. The database query can be asked and answered without knowing anything whatever about any of the data other than how many numbers were involved; say, 84,650,133 records with different identification numbers had wages reported in the month of July.

So what the government does is have thousands of government employees make phone calls to tens of thousands of putative workers and ask them questions about their work and personal habits, questions which are presumably not invasions of privacy. They then do some fancy mathematical extrapolation with that sample of the population to extend it to the population as a whole and apply some mysterious “seasonal adjustments” to report the number of people who are working.

The government also has thousands of government employees making phone calls to tens of thousands of businesses ask them questions about their current hiring. They then do the same kind of fancy mathematical extrapolation with that sample to extend it to all businesses and apply similar mysterious “seasonal adjustments” to report the number of people who are employed.

The number of working people reported by the “Household Survey” often differs wildly from the number of employed persons reported by the “Business Survey,” but that doesn’t seem to make anyone disbelieve either number. They just use which ever number suits their purpose, and no one asks any questions about the validity of the methods by which we arrive at these numbers,

Similarly, if we want to know the value of the goods and services produced by the nation’s economy it would seem to be a pretty simple matter to turn to the federal government’s income tax database and add up the reported incomes of the entities which are producing goods and services.

But no, we measure, instead, how much consumers are spending on goods and services. Then we add how much the government is spending on goods and services. Then we subtract the portion of that spending which is items being bought from overseas, and we add the items being produced which are being sent overseas and which, therefor, aren’t reflected in internal spending. Finally, we add “investment,” which is a term so loosely defined as to be almost meaningless. Buying a US Treasury bond, for instance, is not “investment” in terms of contributing to the GDP.

So we measure the Gross Domestic Product not by measuring production, but by measuring consumption. And, in addition to getting a number which is probably wrong, we get a number which, in terms of measuring the economic health of our nation, is utterly meaningless.