NASCAR Notes

This year's phenomenon, Danica Patrick, finished 12th, two laps down to the leader last night. With 20 laps to go she was running 15th. She didn't pass anyone; three cars ahead of her either had engine failure or ran out of gas. Her teammate, who is racing on four wheels for his first year, was running in 9th when he ran out of gas.

At one point Denny Hamlin was complaining that his car was so bad it was "undriveable." He was running in 7th at the time, ten seconds ahead of Danica, who was in 13th and said her car was "a little loose." Rusty Wallace said of her, while she was still just one lap down and in 14th place, that she was "getting a little racy at times," and was "holding her own" and doing really well. He would say that if she was pitting on every lap.

Someday, I hope soon, we will get a female driver in NASCAR who is a competitive driver, and not merely a media darling and swimsuit model.

A little while later Hamlin's engine blew up and his car literally was undriveable, so handling was the least of their problems. Not long later his teammate's engine blew up, so it seems that Joe Gibbs' race team might have an engine problem. God knows his football team had... Never mind.

Announcers told us at one point that Austin Dillion had led 169 laps, which is a nice trick, since only 167 laps had been run in the race at that point. He went on to win the race, and then failed inspection. His car was too low in the rear, which would make it much faster than a legally configured car. We are waiting to see in what manner NASCAR will penalize the team.

"Victory" Has Been Achieved

The ruling on the mandate is actually a little mixed, although it will clearly allow “health care reform” to stand. What it boils down to is that no, the government cannot require you to buy health insurance, but it can tax you if you don’t. That’s what “ACA” does, so Obama’s “grand legacy” is intact. Liberals are absolutely beside themselves with glee, and are wearing out the exclamation mark keys on their keyboards.

I'm glad they are all so thrilled that health insurance companies are going to be selling so many more policies. Yes, I know this is better than nothing, and all that, but unlike everybody else in the liberal camp, I actually think that legislation which makes health insurance companies bigger and more powerful, more in control of the health care delivery system, is a very long way from the best thing that can be done for this nation.

I know, there is all the wonderful things about how they cannot turn down people and must keep kids until age 26... Awesome. They are required to have all of these additional paying clients whether they want them or not. Makes your heart bleed for those insurance companies, doesn’t it; saddling them with all of that additional revenue?

Where are the regulations limiting insurance premiums? The 80% “medical loss ratio” thing? No, actually that's a regulation insuring that they do make a profit, because whatever their costs are they are allowed to add 25% to that to determine their selling price. It’s the “cost plus” thing that Pentagon procurement is so fond of. In any case, that is not a “health care cost” issue, that is a “health insurance price” issue.

Health care costs are generated by hospitals, physicians, drug companies and the like. Where are the regulations saying that a hospital can't charge you $300 for a blanket that they let you use for five minutes before surgery? Where are the regulations that say a hospital can't charge $1000 to one insurance company for a procedure and $3000 to a different insurance company for the same procedure? Where is the regulation saying that a drug company can’t charge $100+ for a pill that costs them 50¢ to make?

An insurance company must spend 80% of its pricing on cost, but a hospital is not limited in anything like the same way. Its costs might very well be only 40% of the amount that it bills. Drug companies might have costs that are only 35% of what people pay for drugs.

So the insurance companies pay the outrageous hospital costs, pay the outrageous drug costs, pay the $2,000,000 doctor salaries, and then they add 25% to that and pass it on to be paid by the people who are being treated. And we are cheering lustily because instead of fixing that broken system, we simply require more people to participate in it.

Victory? This nation is so bankrupt we don’t even know what victory is.

Adjusted Again

Last week's initial unemployment claims were 387K. Um, no, they weren't.

In the week ending June 23, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 386,000, a decrease of 6,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 392,000. The 4-week moving average was 386,750, a decrease of 750 from the previous week's revised average of 387,500.

Emphasis mine. So once again, for the second week in a row, instead of this week's 386,000 being essentially flat from last week's 387,000, we have a "drop" from last reek's "revised 392,000" claims. At this rate we will have a "drop in claims" every week and wind up with everyone in the nation on unemployment.

Robert Reich Is Delusional

I think there must be too much residual pot smoke in the air at the University of California, because every time Robert Reich speaks he sounds more delusional than the time before. He is now saying that the Supreme Court will uphold the “health care reform” act, and gives three of the silliest reasons I’ve even heard for his prediction.

First he says that the Court wants to “restore its credibility” with the voting public. Of course, they hold office for life, essentially cannot be impeached, and have never shown the slightest indication that they care about public opinion, but none of that seems to seeped into Reich’s addled little brain. Further, more than 70% of the voting public wants at least part of the act overturned, so upholding it would hardly endear the Court to voters.

Second he says they have a lower court ruling to use as a precedent. Oh, dear. If the Supreme Court was going to do that we would hardly need the Supreme Court, would we? I hardly think it’s likely that the nine justices intend to render themselves irrelevant.

Finally he cites Social Security and Medicare, as if he thinks that requiring citizens to pay into a government program is the same thing a requiring them to purchase a product from a private company. The point that it’s not the same thing is the whole point of the lawsuit.

Now, if the President would “put health insurance companies into receivership” as Robert suggested he do with a British corporation during
an oil spill… That might incur cries of a dictatorial presidency, but what the hell, we have those cries already.

Update, 7:30am: I didn't say they would not uphold it, I have never had any predictions on that outcome, and I was not mocking his prediction itself. If you think they upheld it for any of the reasons he gave, you are simply mistaken. I'll look forward to reading their ruling, but it won't read, "We wanted to restore our credibility."

California & The Internet

San Diego County allows you to pay your property taxes online, but charges you 6% for doing so. They claim that credit card companies charge them that percentage for processing the payment, which is absurd. I have a merchant account which charges me less than that, and I am a flyspeck compared to San Diego County.

The renewal notice for your auto license says that you can renew online and provides the URL for doing so. That turns out to be not wholly mythical, but it is not entirely factual, either. I went to the DMV website, which says there is no extra charge for renewing online. Excellent, let's give it a shot.

I clicked on the "renew tag" link and got "page not found" error. Tried again and got the "Step One" page where I filled in the tag number and last five digits of the VIN. Clicked on the "go to step two" button and got another "page not found" error. There are, it said earlier, eight steps.

I believe it is time to get out the checkbook and some stamps.

Krugman On Deleveraging

Paul Krugman opines today on why present economic policy for ending the depression is all wrong. Perhaps “policy” is not the right word, since his reference is to what “debtors” are doing, and God only knows who the “debtors” are. But, moving right along, without having a clue as to who we are talking about, which is perfectly okay because we also don’t have a clue as to what the hell we are talking about,

So one way to explain our depression is to say that debtors, as a group, are trying to deleverage too fast, in the sense that the collective rate at which they are trying to pay down debt isn’t feasible given the zero lower bound on interest rates.

Now, that sounds very erudite, talking about things like “deleveraging,” “collective rates” and the “zero lower bound,” but in plain English what he’s saying right there is that people should not pay down debt when interest rates are this low. Saying that it "isn’t feasible" is his way of saying that he thinks it's stupid because, of course, it's perfectly feasible. His thinking is how we got into this mess in the first place. “Borrow on your home equity now because I can offer you a mortgage at 1.34% interest.”

He is also illustrating why economists should never discuss financial matters because a borrowing decision should never be based on what the interest rate is; it should be based on whether or not you need the money and whether or not you will be able to pay it back. The interest rate enters into the decision only because it is a factor affecting your ability to repay.

"You can save $2000 by buying a car now with these low, low interest rates." News flash; I can save $20,000+ by not buying a car at all, because I don't need a new car. I don't even want a new car, and if I did, I don't want it badly enough to be making payments on it. If I don't need a car, don't want a car, and can't or don't want to make payments on a car, the interest rate is absolutely irrelevant. Paul Krugman, take note.

He also says at one point, that “you can’t get real interest rates low enough to induce sufficient spending on the part of those not deep in debt.” Because, of course, spending is done only by means of incurring debt, which is the basis of Paul Krugman’s economy. He might, unwittingly, be pointing out that a lot of people are smarter than Paul Krugman is, and are not borrowing money merely because the interest rates are low.

I suspect that his wife never lets him go into a store by himself.

The paragraph after the one I quoted says that the government’s economic policy goal “is not to stop aggregate deleveraging,” by which, if you take away his thesaurus, he means not to stop people from paying debt down to zero, but “to slow it down to a pace that can be accommodated by monetary policy.” God only knows what that second part means, because I’m not sure that even Paul Krugman does. He doesn’t, at any rate, explain it. If you are disturbed by a government policy of officially discouraging reduction of debt, you are not alone.

Origin Of The Universe

Watching this was an hour very well spent. Delightful and informative.

I have always had a little difficulty fully comprehending a universe expanding away from us in all directions when we are not the center of it. This guy presented it in a manner that fully clarified the issue, and he is an entertaining and brilliant speaker. His "take" on dark matter and energy is fascinating.

On Moral Leadership

I was not a particularly great admirer of Jimmy Carter when he was President, but in the years since then I have come to think of him as unquestionably the greatest Former President this nation has ever had, and one of the great unsung heroes of all time.

Like our present President, he has a Nobel Peace Prize; only his was not awarded in the hope that he might not start wars all over the world, which turned out to be a somewhat futile hope, but was awarded twenty years after his term in office ended, for “his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development," all of which he did without seeking any trace of public recognition.

So when, in a New York Times editorial yesterday, he speaks of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights he knows whereof he speaks, and when he says that, “our government’s counterterrorism policies are now clearly violating at least 10 of the declaration’s 30 articles,” he speaks with a moral authority which should be taken very seriously.

You really should read the whole piece, which he finishes by saying that, “As concerned citizens, we must persuade Washington to reverse course and regain moral leadership.” I’m not sure how we could do that by reelecting Barack Obama or by electing Mitt Romney, which leaves us with a considerable dilemma.

We Don't "Do These Things..."

The New York Times has an article today about hospital charges which says, among other things, that “the charges you see on your [hospital] bill are usually completely unrelated to the cost of providing the services.” It asks why, for instance, thirty minutes in an operating room is charged at $2000 and answers its own question with, “There is absolutely no basis for setting that charge,” and that it is not based upon the cost of running that operating room.

And what did “health care reform” do to address this issue? Well, actually, nothing. The legislation does not even attempt to regulate hospital pricing, any more than it regulates drug pricing. If a drug manufacturer wants to charge $100+ for a pill that it costs 50¢ for them to manufacture, and many do precisely that, it can do so with impunity because “health care reform” legislation is entirely silent on that subject.

The article goes on to say that hospital charges, what is paid by insurance and what is paid by the patient, is determined by the economic power of the insurance company and the medical provider, leaving the patient caught in the middle. “If you line up five patients,” it says, “…and they get the same exact medication and services, if they have insurance or if they don’t have insurance, the hospital will get five different reimbursements, and none of it is based on cost.”

Simply assuring that everyone has insurance solves nothing. It tells of one patient who was billed by the hospital demanding immediate payment of $9200. It turned out that only one insurer had paid at the time of the billing and that all the patient actually owed was $142. What does the “health care reform” bill do to correct that problem? You guessed it; nothing.

Another patient was billed $25,000 which an advocate got reduced to $3,915 because there were billing errors by the hospital, and services were performed which were neither requested or necessary.

Supporters say that the scheduled reductions in payment amounts by Medicare will drive down the cost of health care. They might if they are ever actually implemented, but they have been scheduled since 1997 and every year Congress has “postponed” the scheduled reductions. Even if enacted, they will reduce the cost only for Medicare, not for health care as a whole, and they may very well increase the cost elsewhere as the Medicare reimbursement reduction is made up general medical practice.

It wasn’t “health care reform,” and even as insurance reform it was botched.

"We Do These Things..."

The blog Newshoggers is a big fan of “health care reform” and occasionally posts a compendium of articles regarding improvements in health care which claim to be a result of that legislation. I, as you know by now, am somewhat less of a fan and never use the term without putting it into quotes. It’s my own private little revolution.

All of the things that John Ballard touts are well and good, but they do not address one fundamental fact: when it was time to address “health care reform” a choice had to be made between changing the manner in which health care is delivered in this nation and expanding health insurance coverage. We took the easier, and less effective path.

When John F. Kennedy challenged this nation to put a man on the moon within a decade he said, “We choose to do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” He believed in a nation that not only could do hard things, but was willing to do them.

Changing the manner of delivery for health care would have been hard or, as President Obama said of “single payer,” it would have been “too disruptive.” We are a nation, today, that is not willing to tackle the hard task; that is not willing to embrace a better way if it is “disruptive.”

And so instead of fundamentally changing a bad system, we merely extended the system to include more people. As a sop to those of us who would be outraged by the choice, it threw in tidbits to tinker around the edges of cost, but it will do nothing whatever about the fundamental cost drivers of health care delivery, and as such will make no substantial inroads into the excessive cost of the system. Doctors will continue to make seven figure incomes, drug companies will continue to be predators, hospital corporations will continue to pillage the economy, and excessive amounts of medical equipment and supplies will continue to be manufactured and sold. "Health care reform" did nothing, nothing, to address any of that.

Oh, This Is Rich

Last week initial jobless claims were 387,000 for the week. This week initial jobless claims are also 387,000 for the week, but last week was revised upward to 389,000 and so they claim that this week is a "slight drop" from last week's 389,000. Our government is simply hilarious. This week's 387,000 is smaller than last week's 387,000 because we magically turned last week's 387,000 into 389,000 so that we could claim a drop this week.

And I have a bridge in Brooklyn on which I can make you such a deal.

San Onofre Debacle

The reactors at San Onofre nuclear power plant have been shut down for almost six months now, and it is uncertain when they will be restarted. Sempra Energy is assuring us that even if we have an unusually hot summer there will be no power shortages, but they are also publishing instructions on how to conserve power, so that’s a bit of a mixed message.

At issue are not the reactors themselves, but the steam generators which transfer heat from the “primary cooling loop” of high pressure, high temperature reactor cooling water to the lower pressure and lower temperature system which drives the steam turbines that generate electricity. These steam generators were replaced very recently, are a redesign over the originals that lasted for more than twenty years, and failed after only a few months in service. There are a lot of questions about the need for and the execution of the redesign, which added only a trifling percent to the capacity. My sense is that a lot of stupidity was involved.

The media covering this story really should send people to cover it who have at least some knowledge of nuclear reactors, because they keep spouting nonsense. They say, for instance, that some of the steam generator tubes are “corroded,” and talk about the piping that “carries radioactive water.”

According to sources at San Onofre, the leaks are not caused by corrosion, but by vibration causing tubes to rub against each other and against supports within the structure. It seems this is the result of ill-advised design changes for the purpose of increasing heat exchange capacity.

And there is no “radioactive water” in a nuclear reactor, because water cannot become radioactive. The primary cooling loop in the pressurized water reactor design type is separate and at higher pressure so that the water may be kept at a higher temperature, which allows the reactor core to operate at a higher efficiency and temperature. If there are any impurities in that water, which is inevitable, those impurities will become radioactive, so that water does contain some small traces of radioactivity, but it is not “radioactive water” as such.

The implication of saying it the way the reporters do is that the water is separate because it is radioactive, but if that were so there would not be the “boiling water reactor” type, in which the water which cools the reactor is turned into steam that drives the turbines. There is nothing inherently dangerous in this design from a radioactivity standpoint, although there are other really severe drawbacks to it which should result in it being banned.

I realize this sounds like nitpicking, but when a reporter starts talking about “radioactive water” it creates a sense of danger which is simply not accurate. My support for the NRC and the nuclear industry has taken a bit of a hit from reading about the stupidity involved in the design changes in these steam generators and the NRC’s approval of those changes, but we don’t need to add to the anti-nuclear hype with inaccurate reporting.

American Exceptionalism

Glenn Greenwald is considered by some to be, shall we say, a bit “shrill”
in his condemnation of some of the practices of the US justice system. I would say that passion in the pursuit of restoring the constitution is not a vice, but that's just me.

In discussing the plea that Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, is making to Ecuador for asylum, he says that Assange is not trying to avoid justice, he is trying to avoid the United States, and he makes some rather telling points. He speaks of having talked with numerous individuals who were once associated with WikiLeaks or who still are, and says that “many have said that they stopped even though they believe as much as ever in WikiLeaks’ transparency cause,” and continues that their reason was “fear: not fear that they would be charged with a crime by their own government, but out of fear that they would be turned over to the United States.”

He has pointed out the inhumane solitary confinement of Bradley Manning for over a year without any actual charges being brought, let alone conviction, which makes a person’s fear of being turned over to the United States seem like a pretty reasonable fear. It also does not really fill me with pride at being a citizen of the nation in question.

Can’t say it makes me want to rush to the polls and vote for Obama, either.

Full Circle

And so now we have come full circle, as President Obama cites executive priveledge in refusing to provide documents regarding a Justice Department foul up to a Congressional committee investigating that debacle. More and more this President is morphing from "Bush Light" to "Bush redux."

Economic Nonsense

Paul Krugman was on Rachel Maddow on Monday. She spoke for five minutes first, giving her own expert opinion on the economy, then she had Krugman on for four minutes and allowed him to talk for two minutes about his expertise on the economy. Her questions were longer than his answers and it was, to say the least, not very illuminating.

Mostly they talked about providing jobs for school teachers. I had the rather foolish impression that schools were for the purpose of educating children, but apparently I am behind the times, because these days schools have the primary purpose of providing jobs for teachers.

San Diego is facing budget cuts in the education system, and all of the talk is about “teachers facing layoffs.” When some funding was salvaged the headline was about how many “teachers’ jobs were saved.” There was never any discussion regarding the effect on the children attending the schools.

Anyway, Paul Krugman talked about 600,000 teachers being laid off and the effect on unemployment, and that if we could have saved those jobs, or if we could return those 600,000 teachers to work that “unemployment would be down around 7% and we would not have this depression.”

Seriously? We lost 14 million jobs since the beginning of this depression. The recovery, according to Obama, of 4.3 million jobs brought unemployment down just under two points, and 600,000 jobs is going to bring it down more than another full point?

Krugman and Maddow agreed that we should be adding more government jobs because “they are real jobs” and because government workers spend money and that “consumer spending” helps the overall economy. What neither of them considers is that the money that government workers are spending comes out of the pockets of non-government workers, which reduces those people’s ability to spend. If you take money out of one pocket and put it in a different pocket you have not increased your wealth.

But that’s the way modern economic theory works today. The solution to an economy which crashed due to excess debt is to borrow more money. Moving money from one place to another place creates wealth. Labeling bad debt as good debt restores a balance sheet to health. Endless bullshit and insanity.

4th of July Wreath

After seeing Landee's awesome wreath last year I just knew that I had to have one for myself! Check Landee's out at her blog Landee See, Landee Do. It was super simple to make and has endless possibilities! My sister and I both made one with the same supplies and used our own personal style and they both came out entirely different. We used styrofoam wreaths and small pins to hold the ribbon on so nothing is permanent, if you get sick of it you can remove everything and change it up! I'm thinkin I may have to make a similar one for Halloween. Luv it!

I can't wait to get out my firework jars that I made last year too!

 Just click here for the tutorial on these little babies!

Now it's time for some inspiration!!

Of course I had to show of Landee's wreath!

Don't these look yummy! Check them out at Tidy Mom

You have to check out The Hostess With The Mostess. Tons of great party idea's

I found these at An Altered State of Mind, these would be cute party favors.

Uh, yum. Theses are from the Noble Pig

I'm kinda thinkin I might be hungry right now because I'm posting all food pictures.

It's just that everything looks so yummy!

Check these strawberries out at Cupcakes Kisses 'n' Crumbs

 My sister made these strawberries last year and they were really good!

Visit Grin and Bake It for the instructions

Living Locurto, My kids would love these

I made these last year and they were a big hit! My advise to you is start looking for

blue jello before the 4th of July. I ended up going to 6 different stores last year on 

a blue jello hunt. Check out Brown Eyed Baker for the recipe.

4th of July chalk at From Glitter to Gum Drops

This cute popcorn pail is from Bloom Design, don't forget to vote for her at Circle of Mom's

she has a link where you can vote at the top of the blog post.

This list could just go on and on, there are so many creative idea's out there. I hope 

you enjoy these few.

Happy 4th of July everyone!!