Nullable Types Make Me an Agnostic

I think part of why I am interested in atheism is that I am a software engineer and I write code.  Code is a lot of boolean logic.  Most of it is simple amd obvious.  I know if a condition is true or false, and then I act on it.

In most languages – at least C derivatives – a boolean variable must have a value.  It’s true or false.  This concept extends to all value variable types, for example, integers.

But for years, programmers in C-derivative languages have had a problem with this.  Let’s say I’m pulling a number out of a database, and then I make a decision based on its value.  That’s great, but what happens if that record doesn’t exist in the database?  What value do I use to represent this condition?

So .NET came up with the idea of nullable types.  Instead a variable whose type is “bool”, I can create a variable whose type is “bool?”.  “bool?” variables can be either true, false, or null.

What does null mean?  Well, nothing, really – it means the variable doesn’t have a value.  I’m allowed to use it in logical statements, to check if my variable is true or false, but I also have to check if it’s null, because that’s a third option that has meaning.

I like “bool?” variables.  They were a necessary addition to the language.  Before they existed, our logic was much more complicated.

From a pragmatic point of view, it is often times critical to understand the difference between true, false, and “not specified.”  When it comes to the existence of a deity, I think we can all agree that the truth is “not specified.”

In a sense, both deists and adeists are operating in a world where nullable types don’t exist.  There’s no such thing as “bool?”, only “bool”.  If I ask my database for a boolean column value and nothing comes back, I have to make an assumption: empty means true, or empty means false.  Obviously, deists assume true and adeists assume false.  Agnostics assume nothing.

It’s very clear to me, as a programmer, that assumptions are bad.  That’s why I like nullable variables.  However, I, like many people, have a natural revulsion to “neutrality.”  I don’t like admitting that I don’t know, especially when it’s a decision that could potentially affect my entire life – the way I think, how I behave, my very identity as a person.

There’s an old Chinese proverb that I’ve always really liked: “he who sits between two chairs often falls down.”

But I’m also not a fan of taking an opinion when I have no evidence.  In some contexts assumption is the right way to go, such as in a court of law.  Presumed innoecent until proven guilty.  And a verdict has to be given.  “Not sure” is not an option.  And this is for practical reasons: if a jury could say “not sure”, we have to do something with the accused – do they go free or are they jailed?  Can the state drag them into court again and again, effectively imprisoning the accused in the court room?

Whether or not God exists has, to my knowledge, no practical application except to the believer.  If I choose to believe and that impacts my actions, fine.  If I choose not to believe and that impacts my actions, fine.

A lot of atheists rail against religion because they believe that the religious are affecting their public policy based on their religious beliefs and that is wrong.  A classic example of this argument in play is abortion, as we heard in 2004.  Liberals were afraid that Kerry, who tried to play the catholic angle (“Look, I’m just like JFK, really!”), would not uphold Roe v. Wade because it was at odds with his catholic beliefs.

But I’ve never been able to get an atheist to give me a solid reason why the motive for a belief is important.  What if I, a non-religious person, is against abortion and believe it should be illegal simply because my gut feeling tells me it’s wrong?  The only difference between me and a religious pro-life person here is where our belief came from.  And when I ask why that matters, I can’t get anything but a bizarre emotional reaction.  I believe a lot of atheists fancy themselves as independent thinkers, so they are apalled when they suspect someone might have developed a belief because they were told to believe it.  I find this ironic since many atheists are also hyper-educated, and virtually everything they love – namely, their cranial knowledge – was simply imparted to them by someone else.  Case in point: atheists love evolution, but atheists are not Charles Darwin.  They didn’t come up with any of these evolutionary ideas on their own.  The atheist was merely taught evolution and henceforth decided that it was a good idea, it was true, and would believe it henceforth and challenge any idea that challenged it.  How is this different from the paritioner who was merely taught that abortion is murder and henceforth decided that it was a good idea, it was true, and would believe it henceforth and challenge any idea that challenged it?

If someone could please explain this to me I would be much obliged.  I’ve searched the world and elsewhere for a reasonable answer and have yet to find one.

Exactly What I’m Talking About

One thing I’m not great at (yet) is predicting how much interest or commentary a particular subject will generate.  So far my piece about how Buck Compton is an alpha male has so far generated more traffic here than anything else.  Honestly, I’m a tad ashamend about that because if there’s even one piece I wrote here that would offend Buck Compton I’ve probably failed as a human being, and there’s gotta be at least one.

Another one of the pieces that has generated a lot of flack is my criticism of that stupid whore who tried to ruin a guy’s life because she let him screw her in the dark.

Good old Roosh found this crap and wrote a pretty good summary of everything wrong with it, and I don’t want to reiterate his sentiments because he’s spot on.

But I want to draw your attention to a quote from a post a few days back:

I walked up to the gates and told the man who was working there that I wanted to report sexual harassment on the metro. He told me the only number to call was the metro police, so I spoke with a policewoman and told her I wanted to report a harassment incident. She said the only way to report it was to wait at the station for the police to arrive and tell them in person, or to physically go to a police station. Bullshit. There should be an easier way. That made me angrier than anything else. I wasn’t in the mood to further mess up my night by spending the next undeterminable amount of time trying to report what happened, so the appropriate authorities will never have ANY idea about the extent of sexual harassment on the metro. They should make it as easy as possible for us to help them keep track of our safety. Holla back for a metro harassment hotline?

This is exactly the same psychology that would drive a girl to put her boyfriend’s brother in prison for five to seven years because she was too thoughtless to turn on a light.

What do you suppose will happen to a man who is “reported” for sexual harrasment on the metro?

No, not five to seven years in a facility to be determined by the department of corrections.  But I bet he gets arrested.  I bet he has to appear before a judge.  I bet he has to attend “sensitivity training.”  He might lose his job.  If he’s married or in a relationship imagine the crap he’ll get in at home.

How much bullshit do you think the catcaller would have to endure?  For what?  15 seconds of discomfort that any other mature adult would have simply brushed off the same way a kindergartner brushes off being called a dooty-head on the playground because sticks and stones can break her bones but words can never hurt her?

One of the points I was trying to illustrate – but obviously failed – with my elegantly titled Rape LOL piece was to illustrate how ridiculously unbalanced these kinds of matters are in the eyes of the law and how selfishly and unapologetically ignored or exploited they are by women when they feel even the slightest affront to their whims.

The “sexual harrasment” in this case that was so egregious that this woman would have put this man through months of bureaocratic, legal nonsense was a reference to an act she has probably performed on dozens of men before:

“Can I ask you another question?” He moved closer to me and I immediately became uncomfortable and started to back away. Then he asked “….do you give head?” and made a lewd gesture.

The difference?  She thought the frat boy she blew at that party two weeks ago was good looking, but the man on the metro wasn’t.  So when the frat boy asked for a blow job she said yes and proceeded to suck him off, but when ugly metro guy twice her age asked if she gave blow jobs at all – a far cry from a direct proposition – he deserves to go to jail.

And god forbid she has to wait fifteen minutes for the police to arrive so they can take a statement.  The so-called perpetrator will probably have to do 100 hours of community service after a kangaroo court takes her word at face value and ignores that little bit about being innocent until proven guilty.  But she’s far too busy to wait at the metro station so she can actually follow through on reporting this grave criminal act.  If she waits, she’ll be late for her power lunch at her stupid HR or marketing job.   Wouldn’t it be great if she could ruin this guy’s life for the next six months in 30 seconds or less?

It probably took her longer to write the blog post about the incident than it would have to report it to the proper authorities.

This leads me to believe that, as you can probably guess, she wasn’t really that put off by it.  She’s simply blowing it out of proportion to get attention, to have something to bitch about that isn’t her period or her mother, and to perpetuate this constant victimhood mentality that all feminists adopt to portray women as always on the receiving end of every unbalanced system because they somehow deserve it as a reparation for an evil patriarchy dominated by male rapists that they, regardless of all the pissing against the wind they’ve been trying for the last forty years, have been totally incapable of changing.

Then again, who am I to call the kettle black?  I suppose if I’m allowed to rant and rave about everything wrong with her blog and her life on the internet, she’s allowed to blow something like a catcall way out of proportion on hers.  It’s impossible to tell whether she lets the crap she spouts on her blog overflow into real life.  I would claim that she clearly does: when she approached the metro counter to “report sexual harrasment on the metro”, if the lady had kindly informed her that all she need do is point out the perpetrator and he would be flash-castrated by armed metro guards on the spot, she would have certainly gotten her finger ready.

Me?  I refrain from ruining the worlds of everyone who disagrees with me in real life, like for example, all of Barack Obama’s voters, because it doesn’t accomplish anything.

Hint: charging catcallers with sexual harrassment doesn’t accomplish anything either.

RE: Epic Fail

Tim  now fancies himself as a political satirist.  Sarcasm is to comedy as satire is to “journalism”.  I will admit that I too expected more of Barack Obama, but rather than be angry at my messiah for failing to pass unpopular legislation, I am pleased that the American spirit is still alive and well.  In other words, fuck socialism.

Facing mounting opposition to the overhaul, administration officials left open the chance for a compromise with Republicans that would include health insurance cooperatives instead of a government-run plan

Doesn’t it just burn your ass that the liberals howled and moaned about Iraq for 8 years and we invaded anyway, but Barack Obama wasn’t even capable to get a bill on his desk when his party controls sixty seats of the congress?  I never thought the left’s panties could twist tighter under the reign of their golden boy Obama than it did during Bush’s tenure, but Obama’s failures only serve to highlight Bush’s successes – successes in passing his agenda regardless of opposition forces trying to stop him.  First term Bush had balls of steel and he used them.  Barack Obama needs a magnifying glass to find his.

Well that didn’t take very long did it? How many times do I have to say it?

Wow, that sounds like something I’ve said before on many occasions, for example, before Barack Obama was elected.  Are you finally catching on, Tim?

The Democratic Party is the biggest bunch of pussies in the history of western politics.

A point which I tried to convey to the masses before they elected Barack Obama.  I will never understand why this country needs to be reminded just how weak-kneed the democratic party is.  When you adopt a populist-style method of leadership, which both democratic presidents and the vast majority of democratic lawmakers do, all it takes is focussed, loud opposition to change their agendas.  That’s no way to govern.  Say what you want about W, but at least the man had convictions – whether you agree with those convictions was decided in 1999.

Let this be a lesson to you, America: we get what we vote for.  Why are you so surprised now?

Why won’t someone, why won’t ANYONE play hardball with these far right wing lunatics???????? Why are they afraid of these mentally challenged, doctrinaire psychos?

Because politicians in general are more interested in their own careers and their own reelections than sweeping change for the sake of sweeping change.  Look, Obama already got elected.  Passing his legislation won’t help Obama further, except by aiding his reelection bid, but forcing vocally unpopular legislation will hurt the legislators who cast the votes.  Whether the legislation actually helps America is probably not high on the list of priorities for congressmen on either side of the aisle.

You already know the problem.  The liberals claim to represent what the people want, which means if the numbers indicate the people oppose something, you’ll be hard pressed to find a liberal who will stick to his guns and pass the legislation in spite of what his constituents say to the pollsters.  You’ll be hard pressed to find a republican who will, too, but your odds are better.

Exactly how are we supposed to reform the health care system when we have no alternative to compete with the insurance companies? Isn’t competition good for consumers? Isn’t that what the magical fucking free market is all about? If private insurance companies are so incredibly infallible, then a government run public option wouldn’t pose any sort of a threat, right?

Tim should read some of my other pieces.  If a government-run insurance “company” were subject to market forces, he would be right.  In the private sector, a company who continually loses money eventually runs out and closes shop.  A public sector company would be immune to losses because the red on its books would be subsidized by the public.  No serious legislator, or even Barack Obama himself, has tried to make the claim that a government plan could operate in any other way than at a deficit.  If it tried to break even or even make money, it would be required to follow the same practices which the left demonizes private insurers for doing today, such as blocking people with “pre-existing conditions.”

I’ve been meaning to talk about this myth for a long time, so now’s as good as any.  Let’s suppose you run a lemonade stand and you put up a sign that says lemonade: all you can drink, 25 cents.  Suppose it costs you 5 cents to make a cup.  Most people will not drink 5 cups of lemonade, so you turn a profit on each glass.  What happens when your only customers are camels?  Camels who drink 15 cups each hour?  You’d run out of money to buy more lemons unless you did one of five things:

1. Do not offer “all you can drink” lemonade.  Charge per cup.
2. Charge more per cup to all customers in order to make up for the camels.
3. Add a quid pro quo of “maximum of n cups” to your “all you can drink” offer.
4. Do not serve camels.
5. Close your lemonade stand.

If private health insurance companies did #1 or #5, they would no longer sell insurance.  Instead, they do a combination of #2, #3, and #4 and it’s still not enough.

Patients with pre-existing medical conditions are turned away from insurance because “insuring” someone with a known condition that equates to a known fixed monthly cost is not insuring, it’s subsidizing.  If a customer is going to end up paying $1000 per month in premiums to the insurer for a condition that is known to cost $10,000 per month on average in medical bills, why on earth would a private insurer take on that customer?!  It’s common fucking sense.  The private insurance companies not only don’t want to do that, they can’t because they would go out of business.

Obama is talking about forcing insurance companies to take anyone, including people with pre-existing conditions.  Do you people have any idea what is going to happen if he succeeds?  The only way for them to stay in business is to charge 89 other people $1100 per month in premiums to make up for the $9000 going down the drain each month to pay for a person who only pays them $1100 for insurance that costs the company $10,000.  Widespread increases in insurance premiums will cause private companies who currently insure their employees to see a large increase in their operating costs which will necessarily cut into their profits which will necessarily drive the economy down as stock prices decline.  Many smaller shops will simply stop covering their employees entirely because it’s too expensive.

In other words, for the relatively small number of people who have medical conditions that have guaranteed associated monthly costs, Obama will fuck the rest of the country by fucking its economy and forcing month-to-month shops to drop insurance for their employees, thereby exacerbating the problem.  The net result will be more people will be uninsured, not fewer.

You’d have to be retarded to think this is a good idea in spite of the obvious effects such legislation would have.

This President doesn’t want to get his hands dirty. Heaven forbid that he should actually take a stand for the poor liberal saps who actually voted for him and show some spine in the face of this rabid, right wing lunacy.

Of course not.  He wants to get elected in 2012.  See the closing paragraphs of this masterpiece.  Tim, if you put aside your seething hatred for a minute you might admit to yourself that you could learn from my sage-like wisdom.  Barack Obama doesn’t give a shit about you or anyone else who voted for him, and I feel sorry for you that Obama has so callously made clear what suckers you all were for believing otherwise.

I wish that someone in a position of power would just stand up on a podium and tell all these socialistphobics and death panel fearers that they’re too stupid for polite society and need to shut the fuck up.

How soon you forget that when the republicans are in power, they stand up on a podium and tell all those pesky dissenters who disagree with their agenda to kindly shut the fuck up and actually proceed to accomplish their agenda.  The democrats failed to stop Bush even when he had a congretional minority and yet the republicans seem to be capable to stop Obama when he has a congretional majority.  I don’t need to ask which party appears to be more capable of getting things done.

Obama dropped the ball, and he didn’t even get it into the opponent’s side of the field.

I would argue that he put the ball squarely in the republican’s field and then dropped it for them to pick up.  If Obama doesn’t reverse the trajectory of his healthcare agenda, the repbulican 2010 midterm elections and the 2012 election strategies have already been written.  If the democrats allow the republicans to write the bill and then try to take credit for it, they’ll find themselves routed a November from now, and they’ll deserve it.

I’m sorry you have to learn this the hard way, Tim.  Next time, just listen to me when I tell you not to vote for democrats.  Of course their platform and their positions sound good.  If you take someone like Obama for his word, of course you’d want to vote for him.  If you listen to Obama’s vision and actually believe there’s a chance in hell of it ever coming into reality, then of course you voted for Obama.

You can try to blame this all on the republicans and their “doctine” but the truth is the CBO had far more to do with the failure of healthcare legislation than any republican congressman.  The republicans, at least in this case, are the voice of reality: it just can’t work.  Obamacare is just too good to be true and I think deep down you know it too.  There’s no such thing as a free lunch and the republicans don’t have to do anything more than simply remind the American taxpayer that fact.

Debunking the Debunk #2

RE: http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/7

I gotta say… maybe if I hadn’t endured 8 long years of “Bush Lied” bumper stickers, this disingenuity coming out of the Democratic White House wouldn’t incense me the way it does.

To summarize this video, a woman who uncoincidentally looks vaguely like Michelle sits pretty in her $500 Herman Miller Aeron and eloquently addresses a straw man.

The “euthanasia” fear doesn’t stem from a passage about end of life counseling as they would like to have you believe.  They would like to have you believe this because it’s simple to address: many elderly people who are, as the industry puts it, “circling the drain” want to tie off loose ends before they die and, having never died before, might want some advice like, what if I want to die comfortably at home in my bed, or how do I legally empower my children to shut the machines off, etc. etc.  It’s perfectly reasonable to cover the cost of paying a counselor for their advice.  Your fears are assuaged; carry on.  You can stop that pesky un-American protesting now.

No.  The “euthanasia” fear is really based on an intense fear of rationing pervasive among the elderly, who of all people rely on government healthcare the most (particularly since, at present, no one else except the impoverished has it).  Obama glibly chuckles at the silliness of an woman who purportedly postfixed ”leave my medicare alone!” to her critique of his grand vision for health reform.  Was I the only one who found that offensive?  Instead of taking her concerns seriously, he brushed them off because clearly this woman he represents was simply retarded and should be ignored.  After all, medicare is government healthcare and she is happy with that, so why shouldn’t she be happy with more healthcare for everyone?

I’m sure thousands of “intellectual” democrats everywhere shared a moment with their Dear Leader when they concurred.  What a stupid old woman.  Only stupid people are against Obamacare.

But let’s take a step back for a moment and do the math.  It’s no secret that medicare is expensive.  Really expensive.  So expensive that it sits right next to social security as a line item on your federal payroll deductions impervious to income tax refunds.  So expensive that even that is not enough – most experts predict that Medicare will be bankrupt by 2020.

Medicare is available only to senior citizens.

What do you suppose will happen when government healthcare is available to everyone?

Is it possible that senior citizens will have a harder time getting the care they need when their doctors are all booked taking care of middle aged New England mayors whose legs are asleep?

Is it possible that the only way to stem costs is to ration health care?  Is it possible that Obamacare might take a page from France’s playbook and prioritize care based on the likely number of years the patient could expect to live after receiving treatment?  Is it possible that such a system would screw seniors?

That’s what we want to talk about.  That’s where our fears come from.  How about you address those instead?

I suppose that’s too much to ask.  If the White House tried to tackle the hard questions they would have to admit that they have no earthly notion for how to pay for Obamacare except to tax the shit out of not just the wealthy but of everyone.  Sure, they’ll start with the rich, until 10 years from now when not even the oppressive success-punishing rich-only tax will be able to pay for Obamacare and by then, all private insurers will be out of business.  As we should all know by now, an entitlement, once given, is almost impossible to take away.  Once Obamacare starts rolling it will take an act of God to stop.

The only way to stop rationing will be oppressive taxation, and like most Democratic strategies, they’ll use our emotional desires, in this case to see our own aging, ailing parents get the care they need, as a weapon against us.  How can we vote to ration care – or eliminate it entirely – when it means our parents will die of cancer they, nor we, can afford to treat?  We’ll walk into 40%, 50%, 60% taxation like lambs to the slaughter because we care about our families.  Before the cup has time to runneth over, congress will immediately vote themselves a raise.

Is this the future you envison for yourself and your country?

Debunking the Debunk #1

RE: http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/4

“Rationing already happens today!  Health insurance companies tell you what you can and cannot have based on the plan you have.”

Let’s stop the spin right here, please.  Health insurance doesn’t tell you what you can and cannot have.  It tells you what it is legally required to pay for based on its contractual agreement with you, the policyholder.

Understand the difference?  Nobody is stopping you from acquiring any procedure from any doctor or hospital of your choice.  The caveat is that if you aren’t covered for it by your insurance plan, it comes out of your own pocket, and probably at a high cost.  Inusrance companies don’t keep customers by nickel-and-diming its policyholders for affordable care.  They stay in business by charging very high premiums for covering treatments that can run into the millions, premiums the average policyholder probably isn’t willing to pay on the offchance that they might need said treatment.

The feel-good theory provided by the White House to sell those thorn-in-foot pro-capitalism constituents is: “if you like your private insurance you can keep it.”   But this, too, is a giant lie. 

Yes, you can keep your insurance as long as your insurance company stays in business, which it won’t.  Once the government enters the market providing zero cost health insurance to the masses, how can a private health insurer possibly compete, especially when employers, the largest customer of private health insurance in the company, have to pay taxes to fund the very public plan that competes with their private insurance provider regardless of whether the company offers a private plan of equal or greater value?  The minute Obamacare becomes available, the clock starts ticking on a company’s private health plan.  Here’s whiy.

 

Let’s say a publicly traded corporation, henceforth “the company”, currently subsidizes private employee health care to the tune of $10,000 per year.  Let’s say the economy, or even just the company itself, falls on some rough times and revenue decreases.  The company has a few options.  It can:

• Cut operational costs without reducing personnel.
• Cut operational costs by reducing personnel.
• Cut profit margins to cover costs.
• Cut into cash reserves.

For the typical idiot who doesn’t understand business, the answer is always “CUT INTO PROFIT!”  As usual, this knee-jerk opposition to profit demonstrates the shortsightedness of the speaker.  When the company cuts into its profits and operates at slimmer margins, their stock price necessarily goes down.  This means the value of the corporation is lower.  This means that fewer people will invest fewer dollars into the company.  This means the company cannot grow.  It may even shrink.  The result is an even larger revenue problem.

Okay, so what about cutting into cash reserves?  Unfortunately this is also a problem.  Cash reserves don’t belong to the company, they belong to the shareholders.  Cutting into cash reserves to fund operational expenses is a giant red flag that the company is in danger, possibly of ceasing to exist.  Once the cash reserves run out, what then?  If a company can’t at least tread water, it has a life expectancy.  Investors flee en masse and the stock plummets.  This is like cutting into profits to fund costs, except even worse.

The real solution is for the company to cut costs.  Losing personnel is usually a last resort, for the reasons above: layoffs are a sign of a company in trouble.  You can get away with it during a recession when everybody is doing it, but generally speaking, it’s a bad sign.  Plus, nobody wants to fire people.  You take somebody’s job, what if they can’t get another one?  Contrary to popular belief, the company is staffed with people.  When a layoff happens, somebody’s gotta tell the poor bastard that he’s gotta go home and tell his wife he lost his job.  Take it from me: that is not an easy thing to do, and it’s something we’d rather avoid at all costs.  It’s so painful that many managers will tolerate a completely inept staff member for years simply to avoid having to fire them.  Some managers make HR do it because they can’t face a guy and tell him he’s not getting paid anymore.  It’s serious business.  It is not taken lightly.

Let’s imagine for a minute that the US had a free insurance plan paid for by taxpayers, including the company itself, that was heavily advertised as being awesome by millions of lobby dollars and which was established by officials the company’s employees elected freely and fairly.  Let’s imagine that all it takes is an e-mail from the Office of the CFO announcing that the company will save thousands of jobs if we all take advantage of Obamacare, the program we asked for and received by electing Barack Obama.

It’s not a hard choice to make, is it?  Fire thousands of people or let their employees reap what they sowed?

What effect will this have on the private insurer, who just lost thousands of customers?  When the company cuts costs by dropping their private health plan, the insurer loses thousands of customers and millions of dollars in business.  Since insurance is a cash flow business, every penny coming in helps them pay benefits.  The best thing in the world for an insurance company is to have a huge healthy-to-sick ratio.  The larger that ratio is, the better service it can provide without going under.

The only end result of a free public healthcare plan that is funded by indiscriminant taxes is the bankruptcy of almost every major private carrier.

The only way private insurance will survive is if the government props them up as a form of conditional corproate welfare in exchange for offering services no better than the public plan, a.k.a. indirect government takeover of the private sector like what they tried with the auto industry, and in that case, there is no effectual difference betweeen “private” and “public” health insurance.

Of course Obama isn’t going to eliminate private insurance.  He doesn’t have to.  Basic market principles will dictate that they will die.  All he has to do is nothing.  Passively ignoring the situation as every major private insurer falls one by one while distracting the news media with publicity stunts like Bill Clinton’s little peace making with Kim Jong-Il will be enough to achieve his goal of a single-payer healthcare America.

If you accept the private bankruptcy scenario as an inevitability, then another inevitability will invariably follow: high end treatments, the kind that private insurance companies rarely cover, will simply disappear.  When the demand shrinks to zero so does the supply.  And even if it doesn’t, you’re absolutely no better off with government insurance than you are with private insurance, because uncovered treatments will still bankrupt you.

Unless, of course, you honestly believe that the government will simply cover everything.  I gotta say that if you really believe that, you need to go buy a book about basic economics and read it because you are totally clueless as to the unreality of that proposal.

First off, if the government covers everything all the time, then it isn’t insurance.  It’s simply government-funded healthcare.  It’s disguisng an entitlement as an “insurance” when what it really boils down to is wealth redistribution from the healthy to the sick: the average American will spend their entire lives paying into the system under penalty of jail if they refuse (i.e., tax evasion) and will probably only take out of the system in the last six months of life.  What Obama is actually talking about is taking the concept of insurance and increasing the scale: instead of the money for treatments coming from and going to the pool of the private insurer’s customers, it comes from every single American taxpayer.

That sounds like a pretty good idea, right?

Except there’s one problem.  With the private system, you only pay into a private insurer if you choose to do so.  You, the individual, are allowed to weigh the risks and rewards.  If you feel that you don’t need coverage and are willing to risk possibly catastrophic medical costs, that’s money in your pocket that the cautious among us don’t have.

Under Barack Obama and his hope and change, that’s one more choice we the people won’t have.  We are all forced to contribute regardless of whether we need or want medical insurance.

I understand the motives.  I understand that, in theory, it is “for the greater good” because we really all should have medical insurance, and with the larger pool we could in theory reduce costs, etc. etc.  We should protect people from gambling with their entire financial futures since that is what skimping on medical insurance is really doing: for an extra few hundreds of dollars per month you risk going bankrupt if you should get into a serious car accident or come down with cancer.  As it stands gambling is only allowed in a few very carefully controlled envrionments to protect people from their own bad decisions.  I understand that, I really do.

But this is America.  This is the land of the free.  The entire spirit of this country is that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is a personal right and a personal responsibility.  Every time the government takes away one of my rights – regardless of its motiviation or how much I get in return- I immediately reject it.  I consider the ability to say no to health insurance a right.  A woman can kill a fetus on a whim, but you’re telling me I can’t choose not to pay for health insurance?  Seriously?

But there’s another problem in all of this, a problem that should be obvious to anyone who has seen a government agency in action.  I’ll give you an anecdote.

In 1970 the railroads were falling apart.  Nobody rode trains anymore because we had airplanes and passenger cars.  But somebody somewhere decided that passenger rail was still important outside of short-hop commuter lines common to many metropolitan areas so the lobbies successfully convinced Richard Nixon to sign a government takeover most of the passenger rail lines in the country, which we know today as Amtrak.  Your tax dollars now subsidize a government-controlled corporation that loses money every single year.

When Obama passed the stimulus plan in January, Amtrak got a big budget boost.  Do you know what department heads immediately told their staff?  Buy.  Buy as much crap as you need.  New computers.  New office furniture.  New coffee makers.  A company car.  Justify the budget money you got this year or we won’t keep it next year.  Don’t need a new computer?  Buy software.  Don’t need anything?  Yes you do.  Buy anyway.

I wish I were making this up, but this comes straight from the mouth of an Amtrak employee.  Her superiors made absolutely no bones about spending money on useless shit they didn’t need for no other reason than the government gave them the money.  It was theirs to spend.  Need did not factor into this equation.

What do you suppose the hospitals and doctors will do when the government is paying their bills?  Do you suppose the cost of health care might mysteriously go up?

Businesses, and people – even “good” people like doctors, whose life goal is to heal – will charge what they think their client can pay.  Because you know what?  Even doctors who like to help people also have medical school loans to pay and if you deserve their services at no cost to you, then they damn well deserve the reward of a  high standard of living for their troubles.  Very few doctors become doctors after 25 years of expensive schooling to live like they could had they dropped out of high school and joined the trades.  I promise you that once the government is paying the tabs, the tabs will go up, because that is what always happens with government.

You understand supply and demand, right?  The demand in a single-payer system in which everyone is covered all the time with no questions asked equates to infinity.  There is no price they can’t pay, no limit to how many times they come to the doctor in a month, and therefore market forces are not applying to the demand.  When the demand is enormous, guess what happens?  A supply is invented.  New treatments that cost an order of magnitude more than current treatments for common illnesses like breast cancer will suddenly become the cure everyone wants, and what politician will deny them that cure?

But ultimately the money comes from somewhere, right?  That’s right.  It comes from taxpayers.  So either the taxes grow to meet the hospitals’ costs, or ….

You guessed it!  Government health insurance starts acting exactly like every private insurer does today: limits what treatments it covers, for whom, for how long, etc.  Also known as rationing.  Do you really think the U.S. government is going to do a better job than a private insurance company?  Why should the government even try?  You, the customer, don’t have any choice, so if Obamacare screws half the country it doesn’t matter, it won’t lose your business because it gets paid by your taxes whether or not you even use their service, and you go to jail if you don’t pay. 

A private insurer has competition, and if they start doing wholesale rationing for high-demand treatments, they’ll lose all their customers and go out of business.  Guess which kind of entity doesn’t feel any market pressure?  The answer is a government controlled corporation with an endless budget and ability to print money to fill its coffers when times are tight.  Sure, it will keep the government health giant afloat with extra funds, and that’s worth double digit inflation fucking the economy year after year, right?

Either that or your taxes will simply be siphoned away by the runaway greed by hospitals, doctors, and pharmaceuticals which will surely follow.  “But doctors won’t do that!”  Oh really?  Only if the government sets salaray caps for doctors.  Oh my, I’ve just gone and touched another third rail, haven’t I?

Obama’s ”hope and change” is hoping that you’ll be too stupid to connect the dots and see through this unfolding charade.  Don’t be too stupid.  Use your heads.  Work it out.  Do you see why it can’t work?

This, my friends, is why so many Americans are up in arms against Obamacare: it simply cannot work.  But that won’t stop the man himself.  Obama has staked an enormous amount of political capital on passing something, and at this point he’s likely to sign anything that lands on his desk because he’s loading the GOP cannons for a 2012 launch if he doesn’t.  If you couldn’t tell back in 2003, every single decision Barack Obama has made so far, or is likely ever to make, is designed to make and keep Barack Obama the President of the United States.  It should be clear by now that he does not, ever did, nor ever will really care what happens to America or Americans – the problems he sows in his 8 years in the limelight will fall on his successors to fix.  He’ll fuck you with a smile and a speech and then spend the rest of his life collecting millions of dollars in speaking fees.

And do you know who made it all possible?  Do you know who you have to thank?

Not me.  I voted for McCain.

P.S.: The good Doctor Patel as shown in Obama’s feel-good video is sitting in a Herman Miller Aeron that costs well over $500.  Vive le proletariat!

Emotional Ideas

While I was tearing down indigo child commenter Steve who, like many of my visitors, did not like what I had to say, it struck me that I should share with you how I reach my conclusions and how I know I’m right.

Mr. Steve reacted to my assertion that indigo children is a fake idea with anger and hostility.  My assertion triggered an emotional response in him.  The result?  Even though I spoke the truth, he won’t believe it because he has an emotional investment in believing what he wants to believe.  His feelings – one way or the other – are clouding his sight.

Feelings have their purpose.  Navigating truth and lies in life is rarely one of those purposes.  Poor Steve.  He’ll go through the rest of his life believing that he’s an indigo child because whatever planted that seed of emotion inside him took root and will not go away.

It’s so easy to spot emotional responses in real life.  It’s a little harder over the internet but not very.  When I make an assertion, if I get a stream of emotion back in response, I’ve got a pretty good idea that I’m right on the money.

My theory is that these angry emotional responses are triggered when your rational brain knows your irrational (or feeling) brain is wrong.  I’ve used this example before, but I’ll use it again: suppose someone informs you that 2+2 equals 5.  Do you get angry and flustered?  No, you don’t, because there is no question in your mind that 2+2 equals 4.  Why, then, does poor Steve get so upset when I question indigo children?  Why does he get angry and hostile?

Because he knows it’s all crap.  In all likelihood, Steve is in actuality a very mediocre person who had some trouble as a kid and probably has one of the conditions that so-called indigo children are usually “mistakenly diagnosed with” like ADD.  But admitting a defect is a hard, hard thing to do for both himself and his family, so they found a coping mechanism – like the belief in the “indigo phenomenon” - to shield themselves from the truth.  When someone like me comes along and pokes giant gaping holes in this shield, the response is anger, and that very anger itself is just another coping mechanism.  Rather than admit the truth, it’s easier to demonize whoever tells the truth and find reasons why what they say can’t possibly be true not because of what they say but because who they are.

I believe the only time your feelings not only can but must be your guide is on questions of morality.  We’ve all seen what happens when morality is left up to the thinking brain: we get ideas like eugenics, suicide clinics and communism.

How the F…

How the f can any thinking person read something like this and not reach the conclusion that I reach:

Thematically, this show is about man’s self determination vs. the need to follow orders. It’s about what we can’t control vs. what we can — and the grey area in between. It’s about the price we pay for both.

Zoe makes the decision to abort (against the govt) to achieve her dream. It isn’t an easy decision (as right to lifers often portray it). It’s an agonizing decision that Zoe will carry the rest of her life. But is was her decision to make. Not the government’s.

The decision to achieve her dream should have been to keep her legs together.  The only women who ever had a baby without semen coming into contact with their vaginas exist only in stories.

Anyone who does not understand this would not last one minute as a computer programmer.  The very first thing we do when we troubleshoot an issue is find the root cause.  The root cause to pregnancy is sex.  The solution to a problem in programming is never to fix the result.  In the industry we call this a “bandaid.”  The solution to a problem in programming is always to fix the root cause.

Medicine, too, understands this and follows the same paradigm: don’t treat the symptoms, treat the cause.  Unfortunately for doctors the cause is often obscure or impossible to fix, but that doesn’t stop them from trying.

Yet, when it comes to something like abortion, all thought and understanding is suspended for one single reason.  If anything goes to show how instinct trumps reason in 99.99% of the population, this reason should: casual for-pleasure sex is a biological imperative.  The right to legal abortion necessarily follows because it is impossible to have casual for-pleasure sex and achieve a 100% no-pregnancy result.

No one disputes that a woman has a right to decide whether or not to have a baby.  Everything else is just semantics.  Semantic nonsense.  All of these discussions about whether a fetus is alive stem only from the rationalizations that women give to their need to fuck for reasons other than reproducing.

Is a fetus a human life?  I don’t know and I don’t care.  Even were I convinced that a fetus was not a life I would still be against abortion because it treats the symptom, not the cause.  I am incapable of looking at this debate without seeing what’s really going on here.

Somewhere, starting probably in about 1960, our culture decided that the need for casual sex should be elevated to come right after air, water, and food.  In other words, we decided that the very idea that a person – a girl – choose not to have sex, or at the very least do so aware of and ready to accept the consequences – was preposterous.  You might as well ask her to starve herself.  It’s her right to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh without being shackled by the consequences of her biology, namely, her ability to have a baby.

I strongly believe the following:

All things good come with a price.  There is no such thing as a free lunch.

The price that comes with casual sex is the risk of pregnancy.

I am a human, and what’s more I am a man.  I’m not advocating celebacy here.  I don’t even disagree with Bristol Palin’s repudiation of abstinence-only education as “unrealistic.”  I want sex as much or more than probably every woman who has ever had an abortion in the history of human kind.

But that doesn’t change the fact that every time I have sex with a girl, there’s a chance I might become a father.  I fully understand the gravity of that consequence and I fully appreciate the risk I am taking every time I fulfill my primal urge to mate.

That’s the difference between a right-to-lifer and a right-to-abortioner.

I don’t buy into this idea that a girl has the right to have all the sex she wants without worrying about the consequences, and I don’t, especially because as a man I am not afforded that luxury either.  Why is it that a woman is free to abort the baby without the consent of the man, but the man is not allowed to choose whether he wants to support the baby without the consent of the woman?  For all this high talk about “it was her choice, not the government’s”, these same people will not extend the same rights to men.

What it really comes down to is that our society does not trust women with consequences, and the women want it that way.  They constructed social lies and social laws to create an environment where exactly that is true.  How can you see it any othe way?  A man loads a bullet and spins the barrel every time he has sex.  Once that girl is pregnant he loses 100% of his rights to choose anything.  But the same is not true for women.  We expect men to restrain themselves and keep their sperm out of a girl’s vagina but we do not hold women to the same standard because everybody knows they will always fail.

If you’re a real feminist, you should be against abortion.  You should demand to be treated the same way that men are treated when it comes to reproductive rights.  You should demand that you be considered equally capable of making responsible life choices as men are considered.  Except you don’t, because you’re all full of shit.  You want the world to give you special treatment.  You want men to bear all the responsibility.  Rationalize it all you want.  The truth may hurt but it doesn’t lie.

It’s True: We are More Charitable

GA- I am actually quite certain- in fact- I’m willing to put 10 bucks down- that a right wing blog will link this post and praise it.

I know he was talking about me because I’m the only so-called “right-wing” blogger that reads Tim’s posts let alone links to them for the purpose of criticizing them.

It’s a shame you can’t make a bet with the internet, or else Tim would have almost made $10 here.  I say almost because, alas, I don’t intend on praising his post.  But who’s splitting hairs?  I linked it.  Close enough for government work.

Speaking of government work…

I know you’re writing a satire, Tim.  I know because I know you.  You have a liberal arts degree in English.  Of course you get a boner for libraries.  You’d probably try to pick up girls there, except, as you ironically obseve, nobody goes to libraries except homeless people and baby boomers.  And English majors, apparently.

I don’t believe libraries should be closed.  I believe they should be revolutionized.

Let’s imagine for a minute that we do what Tim satirically proposes and close all libraries.  In short order, they fall out of the vernacular and become an anachronism of a by-gone era.  Imagine a conversation that will take place twenty years from now with Marty, an indigo child born today, concerning libraries.

Tim: “In my day, we had grand buildings filled from floor to ceiling with thousands of books.  Almost any book you could want you could find on the shelves of these buildings.”

Marty: “Wait… you mean printed books?”

Tim: “Yes.  Beautiful, printed books made from the pulp of thousands and millions of trees.”

Marty: “Didn’t you people used to think that if we killed trees the world would explode?”

Tim: “Well, yes, when it’s for any purpose other than printing the written word, all tree-based products are the tools of the devil.”

Marty: “Wouldn’t the building need to be enormous?  Didn’t it cost a fortune to heat in the winter and cool in the summer?  Didn’t you have to burn lots of fossil fuels?”

Tim: “Yes, but knowledge was worth it.”

Marty: “Wasn’t the PC invented in 1980?  I mean, didn’t you guys have those things called SD cards that were the size of a thumbnail and had enough space to store all the text on every book in the library?”

Tim: “Well, yes, we did, but you don’t understand.  You could drive your car down to the local library and then borrow a physical book.  It smelled like a book and you could hold it in your hands and, you know, read it.”

Marty: “Woah, woah, woah.  You mean you actually borrowed the books?  You didn’t just make a copy of the book to read on a digital reader?”

Tim: “No.  We borrowed the physical book.  And if we didn’t bring it back in 2 weeks we had to pay a fine, and if you lost the book you would have to pay for it.”

Marty: “You’ve gotta be kidding me.  That’s the most retarded thing I ever heard.  If you wanted a physical book – and for the life of me I don’t understand why – couldn’t the library just print you a copy?  LuLu has been around for decades – even back in the stone age – and they do on demand publishing.  Why didn’t the library just have a rapid printing machine in the basement?  When you want to borrow a book you just give them the cost of the materials and have a copy printed for you.  You could even use recycled or newsprint quality paper since I know you old folks have your panties in a bunch about reusing an infinitely renewable resource like a freaking tree.”

Tim: “But you don’t understand, it’s a library… and… books….”

Marty: ”In fact, you wouldn’t even need to maintain all of these local branches.  The library could be entirely online in a central location and printed copies could be ordered online and delivered through the mail.  Digital copies could just be downloaded to your PC and DRM’d to expire in 2 weeks so the copyright holders don’t get the raw end of the deal.”

Tim: “But… but…. and the local library… it… you borrow books, you see, and…”

Marty: “I think all that walking to and from school in the snow uphill both ways killed a few of your brain cells, pops.”

Tim: “Damn kids and your music.  Get off my parents’ lawn!”

Libraries have been antiquated wastes for decades.  They’re the horse and carriage and the internet is the space shuttle.  The only reason they persist is because old people vote and old people don’t know how to use computers.  Plus, the publishing lobby loves libraries because each library in the country is a guaranteed sale for moderatly successful works.

We don’t need libraries in their current incarnation.  All library material could be digitized and viewed and distributed online.  The savings in public funds would be enormous.  But they won’t go away until the generation that missed the whole computer thing finally dies out and the people in my generation finally take charge.  Libraries will be one of the first things to go.

Since I know no one will take up your bet, Tim, and I know you desperately need the money, leave your Paypal account name in a comment here and I’ll give you $10.  Put it in your piggy bank.  One day the bank might be full enough for a deposit on your own place.  Maybe that might even happen before my vision of the library of the future does.

It’s true what they say about us right wingers.  We are more charitable.

Empathy is for Women

From time to time I hear some desperate feminist harp upon the concept of empathy as if it’s a loftyvirtuous trait that all women innately posess and all men should aspire to attain.

Excuse me while I guffaw.

The only way to survive life with a woman – and I speak from experience here – is to be completely devoid of empathy.  Empathizing with a woman on a day to day basis is like tying a ball and chain around your ankle and then going for a swim.

The truth is that women are held hostage by their emotions.  They are victims of their hormones.  And they know it.  Instead of working to immunize their gentlemen lovers from the effects of their biological situations, these pro-empathy women would instead insist that we men empathize with their conditions, in other words, fall victim to the same chemical inbalances that cause their moods to swing wildly from beautiful horny girl you can’t wait to marry to evil maniacal bitch to apathetic lump to depressed emo soul killer.

Any man who has witnessed the horror that is the female hormone machine surely reaches the same conclusion.  Empathy?  Save it.  Sympathy I’ll buy.  But not empathy.  I don’t want to associate with any of the emotions my woman goes through as her body prepares to host my children every 28 days.  If I did, I would be as useless as they are when they have fallen prey to whatever emotional affliction that monthly befalls them like clockwork.

It’s bad enough when one person in the household is going through the ravages of a hormone cycle.  If I had any of this mythical empathy, her mood would also affect my mood.  No thank you.  I’d prefer to stay functional during all lunar phases instead of only half of them.  Empathy?  Of course they want us to have it.  If we did, their behavior wouldn’t seem so ridiculous.

The result of choosing to simply ignore your woman’s hormonally-induced emotional rages makes you come off as aloof and cold, but that’s better than being whatever she is currently being, which is usually either sassy or depressed, or both.

Men, take my advice.  When it comes to empathy, skip it.