Posts from — December 2012

Yes, today is the celebration of the very untraditional Festivus.

If you celebrate I hope all of your grievances were aired and the airing did not involve the Festivus pole being used in an inappropriate fashion.

The standard Consumer Price Index tracks the price of a standard list of products and shows the change in cost to the consumer. The standard CPI shows the change in the cost to maintain a certain standard of living.

The Chained CPI actually shows how people reduce their standard of living to reduce their costs. It reflects changes the consumer makes when prices become too high. People buy cheaper grades of food, and reduce the comfort level of their residences because they can no longer afford to maintain their previous standard of living due to rising prices.

A major expense of people on Social Security is health care. It is acknowledged by everyone that the cost of health care is rising much faster that the standard CPI, for example the 5% increase in the Medicare Part B premium, but health care is not factored in to the CPI. It is obvious that those on Social Security are already losing ground, and the reduction in the Cost of Living Adjustment by the use of the Chained CPI just accelerates the problem.

The Door Guard

What’s that?

[Editor: Property decided to try out one of Excise’s perches on the bookcase by the door to the computer room. She hears something, but can’t locate it.]

Friday Ark

At 5:11 AM CST the winter solstice occurs marking the longest night of the year. If everyone has been good, the days start getting longer tomorrow. Locally, the sun will rise at 6:39AM and set at 4:49PM for a total of 10 hours and 10 minutes of daylight, but tomorrow will be a whole 2 seconds longer.

This also marks HogWatch, so don’t forget to put out the turnips.

Oh, yes, you may have trouble reading this because the Mayan calendar ran out and some people think that means the Apocalypse, but the actual Mayans, who are still around, think it means that you go back to page 1 on their calendar and start again, as in “Happy New Year!” and epoch.

Next year people on Social Security with see a cost of living increase of 1.7%. This means that if your benefits are $1000/month, they will increase to $1017/month. Your actual check will be less because the Medicare Part B premium is taken out before your check is cut. This means that this year you got a check for $900. Next year the check will be for $912 because the Part B premium went up 5%, not 1.7%.

The same increase is used for almost all Federal pension programs, so veterans will see the same 1.7% increase.

When Zero talks about changing the method used to calculate the cost of living to the ‘chained consumer price index’ rather than the standard index, he is talking about cutting benefits for all those programs. Social Security, by law, has nothing to do with the deficit, other than loaning the government $2½ trillion from the Social Security Trust Fund. There is no reason for the Social Security System to be ‘on the table’ in deficit talks. Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit.

Any Congresscritter or Senator who votes to cut benefits that recipients have been paying for, in order to appease the delusional, should start looking for a new line of work. The chained CPI doesn’t make Social Security stronger, is steals money from people who have been paying into the system for decades. If they want to make the system stronger, get people back at work and paying their taxes.

Once again John Boehner can’t convince his own caucus to vote for his own bill. This leads to the obvious question as to why Zero is negotiating with him, as he obviously doesn’t have the support of his own side.

Zero will be in a much stronger position in the new Congress, and there will be fewer total whackoes to deal with, so it is time to wish everyone a Happy Nodwish, and wait for the New Year to start again.

[Title is one of the many quotes from Yogi Berra, who was almost as famous for malapropisms as being a baseball player.]

While I was busy the Gävlebocken was torched. Some people just don’t like Christmas. It is hard to believe that there is a group of arsonists in a small town in Sweden.

I assume the town will try again next year.

Oh, yeah, let’s arm teachers, like they don’t have too much to do already in our screwed up system, so now some clowns want them to become part-time cops.

One of the most effective and cheapest things done after 9/11 was to require airlines to install decent doors on their aircraft. If there had been good doors, and those doors were required to be locked when the aircraft was airborne, the Twin Towers would still be standing.

In Newtown, the doors to the school were locked, but there were large glass windows that the shooter broke to gain access. Why not replace the glass with a tough transparent plastic, like Lexan, that would stall the criminal long enough for the cops to arrive. It doesn’t need to be the same thickness that is used at banks, and you don’t need to make the schools fortresses; all you need is to slow things long enough for the professionals to arrive and deal with the situation.

Some schools use the ‘security glass’ with the embedded chicken fencing which is ugly and blocks a lot of light, but isn’t actually all that difficult to get through. You need the light, but the doors have to be easy to open in the case of a fire. In most schools, you can easily open the door with the crash bar if you break the window.

Replacing the glass won’t be cheap, but it will be a lot cheaper than trying to arm teachers, especially those that teach at elementary schools, and the insurance carriers will raise liability rates through the ionosphere for any district that tries it.

The good news is that Moi at Bloggg has returned to the conversion on a Tumblr site.

The not so good news is that Steve Bates of the Yellow Doggerel Something is in the hospital and out of action for a couple of weeks. It’s best to read his description of the problem.

Instagram announced a change to its terms of service that indicated they thought they had the right to profit from user content however they wished, but they have since backed off after the pitchforks and torches appeared around Castle Zuckerberg. Users should have known that something like this would happen after they were bought by Facebook. This is the ‘underware gnome syndrome’ where a ‘business’ does something like spend a billion dollars for another company that has no idea how to make money from all of the people they attract [phase 1], and then make a profit [phase 3]. Get ready to see repeated efforts at creating a phase 2.

While I was out and about the radio had a call-in show on discussing the shooting. I generally ignored it until a caller said that the solution to mass killings was to increase the penalty to deter people from committing these crimes.

I couldn’t believe that the moderator actually talked to this individual and discussed the Constitutional implications of some of the increased penalties being discussed. I really wanted to call to point out to both of these delusional people that the perpetrator committed suicide after murdering all those people, so it didn’t make a damn bit of difference to him what the penalty was.

And people wonder why the US keeps slipping behind the rest of the world…

“Boldly going

where no man has gone before.”

The Wright Brothers make the first powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

Forget whatever you have been told about the shooter. because it’s probably not true.

It was reported early on that the he was autistic, but that was put out by an unidentified law enforcement official based on what the official said was a family member. They don’t know anything official about the shooter’s mental health.

It has been reported that he had learning disabilities, and disputes between his mother and the school district led to his being home-schooled for some period of time.

Autistic people are usually found listed as victims of crimes, not suspects. I know a number of people who fit the profile for Asperger syndrome, and they might make people who don’t know them nervous, but the only ‘threat’ they pose is knocking something over, as they all include the ‘clumsy’ part of the diagnosis. Given the shooting spree, and the accuracy displayed, as well as references to playing soccer, I don’t think he had Asperger’s.

He had black fatigues and a tactical vest, so he spent some time and effort getting ready. This was planned, not an instance of madness. He definitely had mental health issues, but he knew what he doing, and knew it was wrong.

I realize that the media has to fill their time slot with something, but it would be nice to wait until they actually have some real, verified facts, rather than speculation to offer their audience.

The guns used were illegal, as is any weapon taken onto school property in Connecticut. The weapons didn’t belong to the shooter, they belonged to his first victim – his mother. Murder is illegal, as is suicide in most states.

People want to pass new laws, while there is no funding for enforcing the existing laws. They want to believe it will make a difference. They want to do something.

Pass all the laws you want, but don’t realistically expect anything to change until the American society is healed and healthy again.

With few exceptions, every man in Switzerland between 18 and 55 is a member of the National Guard, and has been issued a military assault rifle, that they keep at home. These incidents don’t happen in Switzerland. Switzerland has a healthy society, so people don’t reach the level of despair that results in these events.

Back in the 1970s we started to see ‘suicide by police’, people would set up a situation where they knew they would be shot by the police. This a variation on the same theme. People have decided on suicide and want the world to know about. The news media obliges.

The Bodyguard

I got your back, Todd.

[Editor: As Todd gets ready to take on a truly obnoxious squirrel, Moses covers for any threat from the rear. Moses is a St Bernard, but his long fluffy coat was removed to help him deal with the local heat. Moses rarely barks, but you know it when he does.]

Friday Ark