09:44 – With all of the news about the catastrophic rollout of Obamacare, I’m surprised that no one has pointed out that these problems lose Obamacare the fig-leaf of Constitutionality that the contingent SCOTUS ruling provided. It ruled that Obamacare was Constitutional based on representations that are clearly false and were known to be false when they were made, and it made clear that its ruling was based on those representations being true.
07:55 – Barbara is taking the day off work today and heading out on a day trip with her friend Bonnie. She needs the break. For the last year–the last two years, really–she’s been coping pretty much constantly with serious medical issues with her dad and mom, and now her sister’s husband. She and her sister have both essentially been on-call 24×7, so having even one day off once in a while helps. I tried to convince Barbara to turn off her cell phone today and stay completely off the grid, but she said she’d better keep it on, just in case.
We got hammered pretty badly by the Federal Follies last month. Revenues for October 2013 were only about 120% those for October 2012. I realize that most people would be delighted with 20% growth, but I’m disappointed by anything short of doubling.
09:07 – The numbers for ObamaCare signups are finally becoming public. On 1 October, the first day of sign-ups, the expected flood of sign-ups took place. ObamaCare signed up not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but SIX people. And that torrid rate has apparently continued all month. During October, HUNDREDS of people signed up for ObamaCare. The sign-ups may even have gone into FOUR FIGURES, leaving only about 99.9999% of those eligible not yet signed up. Not to worry, though. There’s still two whole months before the end of the year.
And I’m betting that nearly all of the people who’ve signed up are insurance companies’ worst nightmares, with pre-existing conditions that are hideously expensive to treat. I wonder if the health insurance companies that foolishly supported ObamaCare are finally realizing that the true purpose of ObamaCare has always been to put them out of business and force a change to a single-payer government monopoly on health insurance. If they doubt that, they need only look at the numbers: after only one month, the net effect of ObamaCare is that millions of people who used to have private health insurance now have no insurance at all.
07:45 – HT to Benjamin Disraeli:
The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Barack Obama fell into the Potomac, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, that would be a calamity.
The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Harry Reid fell into the Potomac, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, that would be a calamity.
The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Nancy Pelosi fell into the Potomac, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged her out again, that would be a calamity.
And to Henry II (although often misquoted):
Will no one rid us of these asshole politicians?
Tie them all up in a sack, tie it shut, and toss it in the Potomac.
07:36 – As expected, the Republicans caved. They got nothing, literally, out of the “deal”. Less than nothing. It may finally be time to cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.
11:26 – Well, that’s interesting. I just got email from an MIT science professor who had nice things to say about our science kits and books, and encouraged me to enter this science kit competition. Our current science kits are ineligible because they’re already commercially available, but the earth science kit I’m working on now is eligible for submission as a prototype/work-in-progress science kit.
09:16 – You won’t read about it in the MSM, but a lot of people are hoping that the government gridlock will continue, ideally until the next president takes office. As far as I’m concerned, the Republicans’ job at this point is to cut off the oxygen to Obama, Reid, Pelosi, and the rest of that bunch. Don’t give an inch on the budget, the debt limit, or anything else. Force them to spend within their means. If that means the size of the federal government is cut in half, well that’d be a good start.
I’ve just been reading about the case in Florida where a 12-year-old girl killed herself by jumping from a tower in a disused concrete plant, apparently because she was depressed by other girls posting mean things about her on Facebook. As sad as death of any child is, the response of the sheriff was outrageous. He’s charged two other girls, aged 12 and 14, with felonies for engaging in speech protected by the First Amendment. From the reports, these other girls are despicable little weasels and poor excuses for human beings. But they didn’t kill the victim; she killed herself. And there’s no excuse for the sheriff violating the Constitutional rights of these other girls, or indeed anyone else.
I made up two dozen chemical bags for chemistry kits yesterday. Today, I’ll make up two dozen chemical bags for biology kit. After we get those four dozen kits assembled, it’ll be back to bottling more chemicals and making up more subassemblies. Lather, rinse, repeat.
09:41 – I’m still working on the earth science manual. As always recently when I sit down to write, I’ve noticed that my endurance is not what it used to be. Fifteen years ago, even ten, I could do heads-down writing for 10, 12, 14 hours a day for weeks on end. Nowadays, I’m tired after four or five hours, and six or eight is my absolute limit. Oh, I can sit there longer and type words on the screen, but there’s no point. What I can produce for six or eight hours a day is useful output; anything after that is just time wasted because the output is not acceptable. It takes more work to clean it up and fix it than it would take just to start from scratch.
I’m afraid the Republicans are going to cave. They need to remember that the reason they were elected was to stop Obama and the Democrats by any means necessary from destroying the economy and the country. Refusing to pass an increase in the debt limit is a good way to do that, and polls show that a majority of citizens want them to do just that. Force the government to live within its means. Cut spending with a meat-axe, cut taxes, cut the size of government dramatically, and kill ObamaCare. That’s what they were elected to do, and they need to do it. If Obama chooose to default rather than cut spending elsewhere, fine. That’s on him and the Democrats.
07:14 – The federal government is shut down, and I hope it stays that way. If the Republicans asked my advice, I’d tell them not to give an inch (2.54 cm). Obama and Reid aren’t the honorable opposition; they’re the enemy. Compromising with them and their Marxist agenda is tantamount to treason. Paul, Cruz, and the rest are American heroes. If this goes on, I expect Obama to show his true colors by having them arrested and hauled away in chains. And if that happens, we may yet see a military coup.
10:37 – CBC posted four short video clips yesterday of Heartland star Amber Marshall’s wedding. Within a few minutes they were also up on YouTube. My impression of Amber’s new husband, Shawn Turner, is that he’s a solid guy. When he’s on camera, I can tell what he’s thinking, “I can’t believe she’s going to/has married me!”
Amber is her usual down-to-earth self. The wedding was held at her/their ranch. On the morning of her wedding, Amber wakes up and mucks out her chicken coop. She then drives into town to buy the flowers for her own wedding. Whatever the opposite of Bridezilla is, Amber’s it. As of a week before the wedding she hadn’t actually planned anything, although she said she “had some ideas.” On the laid-back to stressed-out continuum of brides, Amber definitely anchors the laid-back end. On the morning after her wedding, she’s cleaning out her barn, disposing of the refuse from the wedding and reception. I predict a long and happy marriage for those two. And, yes, she literally did ride in on a horse instead of walking down the aisle.
Work on science kits continues. At this point, things have slowed down, but we’re still shipping 15 or 20 kits a week. That means we have to keep building kits constantly to keep up. I’m not sure what happened in June and July. Ordinarily, those would be heavy months, but this June and July we barely beat the results for June and July of last year. I suspect it had something to do with the expiration of tax cuts and the sequester because we’re by no means the only business that saw volume tail off during those months. The other months have been good, with sales of 1.5 to 10 times as much as the same month in 2012.
All in all, it looks like 2013 will be pretty decent year for us, and 2014 should be considerably better. Which is good, because the morning paper listed the ObamaCare rates for us and the surrounding counties. It looks like a “platinum” policy will cost Barbara and me somewhere around $1,500 per month before the tax rebate. Of course, we won’t get any subsidy because we make too much money. Bastards.
I think it’s interesting how political correctness impacts rates. The single factor that trumps everything in true health insurance is pre-existing conditions, but ObamaCare policies won’t take that into account. A terminally-ill 27-year-old pays the same rate as a healthy person of the same age, which of course means that all the healthy young men are being forced to pay much more than they should to subsidize the ill men. Another major factor in real health insurance premiums is sex. Women cost much, much more to insure, particularly those of child-bearing age. A 27-year-old woman should pay at least two or three times as much as a man of the same age, but that would not be politically-correct, so under ObamaCare she pays the same premium as a man. Then there’s smoking. Cigarette smokers do and should pay much more for life insurance, because they don’t live as long as non-smokers (or, come to that, cigar and pipe smokers). But cigarette smokers should pay lower health insurance premiums than non-smokers, because smokers tend to die younger and of diseases that kill quickly. Non-smokers are the ones that cost the insurance company money, because they live longer and tend to suffer chronic diseases that are very expensive to treat. Of course, smoking is totally non-PC, so smokers get hammered under ObamaCare. The one thing that surprises me is that ObamaCare doesn’t penalize people for being overweight, which is about as non-PC as smoking.
14:38 – Another anniversary today, this one not a happy one. It’s been 12 years, and the US has done little to avenge an attack comparable to Pearl Harbor. Worse, in fact, because the 9/11 attack targeted our civilians. We’ve known since the day of the attack that Saudi Arabia was responsible, and yet there they still sit, undamaged and laughing at us. And, incredibly, the US president wanted to intervene militarily in Syria to protect Al Quaeda terrorists, the group that was primarily responsible for the attack on 9/11.
10:37 – I’m still busy building science kits and processing orders. We were able, barely, to keep up with demand in August. We managed to ship every order without any delay. This month will be a bit easier because demand, while still high, is lower than August, when most homeschoolers are ordering stuff for the fall semester.
I’m also putting some serious thought into designing “middle school” science kits. The normal progression is “life science” (biology light) in grade 6 or 7, followed by “earth and space science”, followed by “physical science” (chemistry lite + physics lite). I don’t have a high opinion of that sequence, because I think it wastes two years of science. I think that by the end of grade 7, students should already have a good handle on the fundamentals of science, and starting in grade 8 they should begin with real “high school level” courses. High-school level earth (geology) and space science (astronomy) in grade 8, chemistry in grade 9, biology in grade 10, physics and/or an advanced biology/chemistry course in grade 11, and one or two advanced biology/chemistry/physics courses in grade 12. If I had a bright student who was destined to major in STEM, I’d devote 40% of class time from grade 8 onward to science courses–with at least half of that lab and other hands-on activities–25% to math courses, and fit the rest into the remaining 35%. I’d also have school running eight hours a day Monday through Friday, with a couple hours of homework in the evenings, and half a day on Saturdays. And I’d run it year-round, with three or four one- or two-week breaks over the course of the year.
12:39 – Brussels fears European ‘industrial massacre’ sparked by energy costs
Quixotic, indeed. With electricity costs typically twice to three times those in the US and natural gas costs four or more times those in the US, Europe can no longer compete industrially with the US and Canada. Of course, neither can Asia, nor indeed anywhere else in the world. This is already obvious in the chemical industry, where feedstock and energy costs are a major portion of total costs. Everyone is busy building new chemical plants in the US and Canada and closing down ones elsewhere. But it’s not just chemical plants. Nearly all manufacturing is heavily energy-dependent, which gives the US and Canada a huge and sustained advantage over the rest of the world. Meanwhile, Europe insists on repeatedly shooting itself in its collective feet by wasting huge subsidies on “sustainable” energy. I mean, off-shore windmills, for Thor’s sake? What idiot decided that? Germany abandoned nuclear after Fukushima, and it and the rest of the EU are busy passing “green” taxes that further hamper the ability of European manufacturers to compete. And in the one renewable-energy technology that may actually make long-term sense, solar, Europe is nowhere.