The healthcare bill passed!

When I heard that on the news last night, I had the same sick feeling as when Bush bombed Baghdad. Here we go again! We need to come up with something other than a 2 party political system. Throw some moderates in there. This current government hokey-pokey (put your left wing in, pull your left wing out, put your left wing in and you shake it all about) is driving us into national bankruptcy. The government is already spending $600 billion a year on healthcare costs. They just added $90 billion a year to that. Their proposed method of paying for the increase is to tax insurance companies $40 billion a year and cut $50 billion a year in payments to Medicare providers. Do you think the insurance companies are going to sit back and eat $40 billion a year? Hell, no! They are in it to make money for the shareholders, not to be a "good Samaritan". Same goes for the providers. Healthcare costs are just going to go up $90 billion a year. I'm not suggesting that I have a better idea, although there are some areas I have an opinion on. It's just that, every time the government decides to step in and fix something, we get screwed somehow. Look at the last 2 attempts at reining in the credit card companies. All you have to do is read some of the news stories about the end results and you realize that we caught the short end of the deal.
The public option is out. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. On one hand, having some "non-profit" competition might drive costs down, but who ever saw the government run anything efficiently?
Requiring me to buy health insurance is in. I guess they are going to hold a gun to my head to make me buy insurance. I sure hope they have a clue as to where the money is coming from to pay for it. Thanks to the greedy assholes that run our banking system, I'm under-employed. Ultimately, they created the recession. I don't have health insurance. My employer got rid of our health insurance years ago. I guess it ate into his travel budget :( Health insurance other than group insurance is unaffordable. I make too much for Medicaid and I'm too young for Medicare. Look at car insurance and how it is mandatory. I have to pay high premiums because some other asshole doesn't know how to drive?
I suppose there is one thing about the passage of the healthcare bill. Maybe now they will shut the hell up about it and move on to some other fiasco-in-waiting to fiddle with. Just remember, the only way we can punish them for their stupidity is to vote them out of office!

The ghost in the machine

I just read an article on MSN's Red Tape Chronicles here that deals with the recent Toyota computer glitches and the future of increasingly digital control of our cars. As I read the article, it started to scare the crap out of me. Anybody who has tried to work on any newer car after years of fooling with the "old-timey" way of fixing cars is left with a feeling of frustration and anger. I acknowledge that there are benefits to computer control, such as driveability and efficiency, but there should be a limit to how much control we give the computer. The "by-wire" experts claim that our planes are already flying by wire with no glitches. That's reassuring! At least a car is already on the ground when the computer burps. Yeah, I use burp. A hiccup is too innocent! I want a mechanical connection on my steering and brakes. I know they can also fail, but when they fail, it's only after a period when you know that they are beginning to fail. With computers, there is no warning. How many of you have seen the Blue Screen of Death on your desktop? Is that what you want when you're cruising down the Interstate at 80? The article goes on to discuss driver inattention caused by the fact that cars are "driving" themselves. Drivers are too busy Tweeting and texting and the more the car does automatically, the better. I say "Take a freakin' cab if you're too busy to drive"! I don't want to be on the receiving end of shitty driving caused by the fact that someone can't focus on driving instead of their I-phone!

Old People Sex

Boy, that title will do two things; get your attention or piss you off ;) Seriously though, there is a new study out concerning the sexual habits of older people. This study concludes that 67% of men aged 65 to 74 were sexually active compared to 40% of women in the same age group. This obviously includes singles because married couples in the same age group are even on the percentages. Some of this activity is attributed to drugs like Viagra, which supposedly allow men to have sex more often. I wonder how much "E.D." is actually caused by the constant bombardment of sex in the media, which would tend to dull the sexual senses. There are already studies out there that show that constant exposure to violence on TV and in video games leaves our children with a dulled sense of danger and responsibility. I imagine porn would do the same thing. What I think it boils down to is that we are in a new era of awareness that keeps me 30 years old in my head while the rest of me is over 50.

In The News...

The Olympics are over!
Having to choose between old re-runs and Olympic curling competition made it tough to watch TV. I'm not a big fan of figure skating, but after watching a few nights of it, I was pretty impressed. Some of the bad calls sucked. I'm surprised there is not a bounty on Kramer's speed skating coach's head. Lindsay Vonn's wipeout and the subsequent yellow flag which stopped Mancuso screwed Mancuso's chance for a medal. But hey, Go NightTrain!!
Earth 1, Chile 0
Another earthquake and following tidal wave hit Chile. I'm waiting on the doomsday crowd to start pointing fingers. The craziest thing I saw was on the news last night. They were showing the looters, who were saying that they were just taking food, but one guy I saw had a small refrigerator on his shoulder. What the hell is he going to plug it into?
Federal employees on furlough
A pissing match (no surprise!) in Congress stopped a bill extending some transportation construction programs as well as unemployment benefits for 400,000 people. Jim Bunning (R-Ky) says the bill will add to the deficit. What bill doesn't these days? What is so stupid is that, since federal inspectors at jobsites are furloughed, the construction workers can't work either. Won't that just add to the unemployment numbers? Don't you just love the whole R-Ky thing? Sounds like our guvmint at work!