Stay calm, dad...

Stay calm, dad...  This will put a smile on your face.  Via my mom, and no, I have no idea where she gets these things...

Miniature couches and 5 day old puppies...

Miniature couches and 5 day old puppies...  That combination can only produce cuteness!

I'm not the only one...

I'm not the only one...  Dr. Joy Bliss, writing at Maggie's Farm, shares my thinking about what to do with the American healthcare system...

Tweet of the day...

Tweet of the day...  Oh, that's gonna leave a mark!

Dogs and doorstops...

Dogs and doorstops, cuteness and hilarity ensues...

Quote of the day...

Quote of the day...  Today it goes to Ann Althouse, writing on her eponymous blog about the ObamaCare debacle:

It's like a medieval torturer complaining to his victim about how difficult it is to use pilliwinks while the thumbscrews are on backorder. 

Hah!

This doesn't make me feel any better at all...

This doesn't make me feel any better at all...   And it certainly doesn't actually, like, do something about the problem:

President Obama said Thursday that he is "sorry" that some Americans are losing their current health insurance plans as a result of the Affordable Care Act, despite his promise that no one would have to give up a health plan they liked.

"I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me," he told NBC News in an exclusive interview at the White House.

"We've got to work hard to make sure that they know we hear them and we are going to do everything we can to deal with folks who find themselves in a tough position as a consequence of this."

Enough with the apologies, keep-your-plan breath.  Fix the damn thing, or lead the charge to get rid of it!

Pink armadillos?

Pink armadillos?  This is just wrong.  There shouldn't be cute, fuzzy, pink armadillos!  I checked to see if it was April 1, and it's not.  They are apparently for real.  They're even on Wikipedia!

Depression rates around the world...

Depression rates around the world.  Redder is more depressed, bluer is happier (go figure).  There were some surprises on here for me, especially the Netherlands.  And what the hell are the Mexicans so darned happy about, anyway?

Pricing signals work!

Pricing signals work!  Some years ago now, power companies started variable pricing on their electrical power.  They charge more per kilowatt-hour during peak usage periods (like the hot afternoons), and less during off-hours (like early in the morning).  This differential can be very large, 3:1 or more depending on where you live.  Worse, the differential is increasing – power companies have “discovered” it as a source of price increases that can be sold as discouraging power use, making the greenies happy.

That pricing difference got people thinking about how to get around it.  Who wants to buy expensive electricity, if they could get it cheaper?  It's not like the expensive electrons are any shinier, or more glamorous – they're precisely the same, just more expensive.  The issue is more of a problem for some kinds of businesses (like hotels), where they really have to use the electricity, and they use a lot more than homeowners.

The whole thing boils down to when you buy the electricity.  If you could buy it at night when it's cheap, store it, and they use the stored power in the afternoon – why then you'd win, wouldn't you?  That's exactly what these folks have done, at a scale that works for a hotel.  There's no reason I can think of why something like this wouldn't work at a homeowner's scale, either – so I expect to see it one of these fine days.

Of course, then the power companies will have to come up with a new way to extract money from us.  If they were actually unregulated and competitive, this would all sort itself out – but since they are highly regulated in all 50 states, the result will quite predictably be a big hairy mess.  What precise flavor of a big hairy mess it will be, I don't know.  But I don't think it matters all that much...

A deal with Iran?

A deal with Iran?  I think how you feel about this possibility comes down to just one thing: whether you trust the Obama administration to lift sanctions against Iran only in exchange for verifiable cessation of Iran's nuclear weapons program.  That's easy for me: not only do I not trust them, I fully expect them to do whatever it takes to get something they can publicly call a “deal”.

Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has a tendency to the histrionic side, but in this case I agree with him completely:

Israel understands that there are proposals on the table in Geneva today that would ease the pressure on Iran for concessions that are not concessions at all. This proposal would allow Iran to retain the capabilities to make nuclear weapons. This proposal will allow Iran to preserve its ability to build a nuclear weapon. Israel is completely opposed to these proposals. I believe that adopting them would be a mistake of historic proportions and they should be completely rejected.

The Israelis have been briefed on the status of the negotiations, so that's an informed assessment.  The nations actually participating in the negotiations with Iran (the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China) all have a political interest in having a peace “deal” – which means anything that their public will accept as a lessening of the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.  That's not at all the same thing as a deal that actually removes the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, which is what Netanyahu recognizes and is what worries me (and many others).

It is to humanity's shame that the only country Iran has threatened to destroy (Israel) doesn't have a seat at this table.  The progressives would argue that including Israel would remove the possibility of a negotiated peace – which, to me, just confirms my fear that Iran is insincere...

Are the scales lifting from their eyes?

Are the scales lifting from their eyes?  Pro Publica has an article up detailing the travails of dedicated progressives who are being surprised by having their healthcare policies canceled, with equivalent replacements either not available or much more expensive.  If we get enough of that, the progressives will blow up ObamaCare!  Wouldn't that be a hoot?

Care to guess who's on the hook?

Care to guess who's on the hook?  The insurance plans offered by the ObamaCare exchanges have a built-in assumption that lots of younger people will buy policies.  Those younger folks will be paying more than it actually costs the insurance companies, because they use relatively little medical care.  That excess will be used to (effectively) subsidize policies for older folks who use more medical care.

That scheme is an intentional feature of ObamaCare, a huge transfer of wealth from younger folks to older folks.  But it depends – it absolutely depends – on lots of young people signing up for policies.  But what if they don't sign up?  What if they choose to pay the fine tax instead?  Will the insurance companies be stuck with paying for all that medical care for older folks, without receiving the premiums from younger folks?  That's worth worrying about, because early indications are that young people are staying away from ObamaCare in droves.

Well, it turns out that the insurance companies are covered for this risk, by the “reinsurance” that's part of Obamacare.  The money for this comes from the government – which means us, the less-than-half of Americans who still pay income taxes.  We are on the hook.  Of course.

When I think of ObamaCare, I think of a giant steamroller with spiked rollers, bearing down on me relentlessly.  Continuing the analogy, there's some hope that its engine will break down, or that voters will blow it up – but meanwhile, it's chugging steadily toward me...and it doesn't look like any fun to be crushed beneath those rollers...

I've been to Deming, New Mexico...

I've been to Deming, New Mexico...  Stopped there on a cross-country drive for gas and a burger.  But I won't be going there again.  What happened there earlier this year reads like a horror story about some place like Turkey in the '50s – but it happened right here in America...

Patent and copyright trolls?

Patent and copyright trolls?  Usually they're a cause for anger and frustration, but this is funny!  Popehat's on it, too, naturally...