An open letter to Al Gore

Dear Al,
You are so full of scatologic detritus.

This morning I awoke and looked out my window to find frost covering my neighbors’ rooftops. Frost - May 17 in east central Iowa. Our tomato plant is probably a goner, and the fern from our niece’s wedding that my wife nurtured indoors through two winters is on life support. This is rather late in the spring to be afflicted with temperatures below freezing.

Surely it has been pointed out to you that the Earth goes through natural heating and cooling cycles. There is evidence that it is overdue for another ice age.

Can you appreciate the irony that the only thing that might forestall global cooling would be to pump CO2 into the atmosphere as rapidly as possible?

Warmist* regards,
tntbloggerdon

* This is not a typo. I have decided to become a “global warmist”.

Hillary vows to fight on

(A news headline from the future)

Chappaquiddick, NY – November 5, 2008
Even as the last votes of the 2008 presidential election are being counted, Hillary Clinton has stated defiantly that it is not over yet. “There are hundreds of thousands of Americans – maybe even millions – who have been disenfranchised by the way this was done,” she stated. “I know that when all the votes have been counted, including those who were forcibly prevented from voting for their preferred candidate – and I believe I was that candidate – I will be able to take my rightful place as the next president of the United States.”

Legal challenges have already been filed preventing the certification of official vote counts in Ohio, Massachusetts, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida and Iowa. In addition, claims of widespread election fraud in Wisconsin, Illinois, New Jersey, Missouri, California, Minnesota and New Mexico have thrown the status of the apparent winner of those races into question. If the charges are substantiated, new elections may be required to be held in those states, and since the Clinton challenge includes a provision that only new voters registered by ACORN and La Raza may be included in the totals, it is possible that all prior votes may be thrown out.

It may take several months to resolve all the legal issues. In the meantime, it has been suggested that the most recent former president shall resume the office of the presidency for a period of time not to exceed two years, under the provisions of the twentieth amendment. Five justices of the Supreme Court (Kennedy, Souter, Stevens, Breyer and Ginsberg) have already indicated they may be favorably disposed to that solution. Former president Bill Clinton has indicated he would be willing to serve for a limited time and has pledged that he will be even-handed in helping to settle all disputes relating to the selection of his successor.

Although she faces an uphill fight to gain the presidency, if all the court cases and subsequent revotes should be resolved in her favor, the electoral votes from those states added to those she and her running mate, Senator Harry Reid, won as write-in candidates in New York, Nevada and the District of Columbia will be sufficient to make her the first woman president.

Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, the candidates of the Democratic and Republican parties respectively have issued statements that each feels he is the lawfully elected president.

April 30, 1789

Cool factoid for today: It's the 219th Anniversary of George Washington being sworn in as the 1st President of the United States.

If I could write like P.J. O'Rourke...

I'd get back in the swing of posting something just about every day. As an additional bonus, I'd get to go cool places, like the deck of the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevel and then say things like the following:

Carrier launches are astonishing events. The plane is moved to within what seems like a bowling alley's length of the bow. A blast shield larger than any government building driveway Khomeini-flipper rises behind the fighter jet, and the jet's twin engines are cranked to maximum thrust. A slot-car slot runs down the middle of the bowling alley. The powered-up jet is held at the end of its slot by a steel shear pin smaller than a V-8 can. When the shear pin shears the jet is unleashed and so is a steam catapult that hurls the plane down the slot, from 0 to 130 miles per hour in two seconds. And--if all goes well--the airplane is airborne. This is not a pilot taking off. This is a pilot as cat's eye marble pinched between boundless thumb and infinite forefinger of Heaven's own Wham-O slingshot.

P.J., of course, uses the spectacle of the carrier launch to draw a point about John McCain:

Some say John McCain's character was formed in a North Vietnamese prison. I say those people should take a gander at what John chose to do--voluntarily. Being a carrier pilot requires aptitude, intelligence, skill, knowledge, discernment, and courage of a kind rarely found anywhere but in a poem of Homer's or a half gallon of Dewar's.

He goes on to compare Mr. McCain to Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama, and not to the latter pair's benefit, with a couple of brilliantly turned lines.

The guy is good.

Updated Blog Roll

Though it's taken me months of pestering, I've finally remembered to add TigerHawk to the blogroll.

Where Your Healthcare Comes From

Yesterday, as I read this article at CNN I was reminded again how little people really understand about how their healthcare gets paid for.

Without getting into the saintliness or evilness of Wal-Mart, I would like to point out a few interesting tid-bits that CNN didn't cover.

First, I would venture a guess that the healthplan that Wal-Mart offers is a self-funded group healthplan operated under the rules and regulations of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, or as every calls it, ERISA. Be crystal clear on this: a self-funded group healthplan is not insurance. It is not subject to state insurance laws or state insurance commissioners. It is subject federal rules and regulations.

Second, a self-funded group health plan is not one and the same with the employer. The plan is set up separately. It has it's on federal i.d. numbers. And the individual who operates the plan, who the regs refer to as the "plan administrator" has duties to the plan that essentially supersede duties to the company. The reason for this can be found in the name of ERISA--namely, that it was written for employee retirement income security. The healthplans grew out of pension and retirement plan. The feds were worried that employers would play fast and loose with their pension money when the company was in trouble, so they essentially required that the plan be separated from the company. The company puts money in, and then the plan administrator has to run the plan for the benefit of the plan members (the employees and their family members who are covered by the plan).

Third, the plan administrator has to operate the plan in a consistent manner. Once the plan document is in place, you can only reduce the benefits after certain rules for notification are met. You have to enforce the terms of the plan. If the plan says, "The Plan will pay up to $5,000 for heart monitoring diagnostics," when bills for $6,000 show up, you'd better only pay the first $5,000. If you pay all $6,000, you may have created a precedent that you'll pay $6,000 for everyone. Or, you may have set a precedent that you'll pay the entirety of a bill regardless of how large it is. The reason for this is that the feds were concerned that the CEO would get on the phone to the plan administator to say, "Hey, my spouse just had $10,000 worth of heart monitoring. I know the plan states it will pay only $5K, but I want you to pencil whip that bill right on through." With the rules as they are, the plan administrator can say, "That's great. The rest of the staff will be excited to hear about their expanded benefits because that would set a precedent of expanded coverage."

Which takes me to the next point. The plan administrator has a duty to treat the money in the plan fund, or money that is owed to the plan fund, as if it belongs to all the plan members. The legal term for this is "fiduciary duty". As part of protecting plan assets, every plan includes a provision that if they are called upon to pay for bills that are the result of an accident that someone else caused, that if money is recovered from that at-fault party, the plan gets to recover the money it paid. Basically, we'd like those who negligently cause injury to bear the ultimate responsibility for it.

So, in the very unfortunate situation in the CNN article, the plan administrator may be entirely honest when he or she states that the plan believes it must attempt to recover the funds won in the lawsuit. Failure to do so might violate the fiduciary duty that he or she owes to the remainder of the plan members. And it might create a precedent that they don't enforce the recovery provisions of the plan document.

This may well be a manifestly unjust outcome, but it's likely not one that Wal-Mart stumbled into accidentally or without weighing potential liabilities of choosing an alternate course. In other words, even if you want to blame Wal-Mart, don't blame them alone. Remember that the healthcare industry is the most pervasively regulated in the nation and there are rules that narrow the realm of decision the company can make.

A few words in defense of Eliot Spitzer

I’m no fan of the former New York governor. In fact I thought his tactics as NY Attorney General were overbearing, abusive and probably the inspiration for that not-actually-any-rape-at-all Duke Rape case Nifong jerk. But I have to say his critics have gone a little overboard by making a big deal out of his keeping his socks on during his “Love Client # 9” exploits.

Unless his trysts with the infamous “Kristen” were taking place in a hot tub, I fail to see what’s the big deal. In fact, if he was actually spending up to $5,000 per hour, as has been alleged, it might have cost whoever was footing the bill for the romp as much as $150 for the time it took to remove, recover and replace the socks – even more if they had been thrown any distance, or maybe fell behind a dresser. It can happen.

So kudos to the ex-governor for showing some fiscal restraint this one time.

It must be the season for political jokes.

(Elected any lately?) Har har.

Here are some of Lance’s favorites (our TnT intern).

One of Obama’s supporters called Hillary Clinton a monster. Hillary denied these claims and continued to destroy Tokyo with her fire breath.

The Grand Canyon is older then thought. It was proved because they found ancient cave paintings that show a young John McCain campaigning for tribe chief.

Here is an off topic joke I liked. NBC fired the chief director of the Today show. All three viewers were very upset.

Feel free to repeat any or all of these jokes. It is not necessary to give credit to TnT.

Just Got High Speed At Home

Well 56k dial up was soooo 1998. I finally upgraded to an 8 Meg DSL line. Maybe it will inspire me to blog more. Then again I could end up wasting all my time watching stupid Youtube videos that make me laugh until my sides hurt like this one. Yeah. That's probably what I'll do.

I am Appalled!

The Iowa legislature is poised to pass a ban on smoking – which governor Butterburger is itching to sign – that will ban smoking in all sorts of Iowa “public” places including bars, restaurants, casinos and VFW halls. Now, ignore if you will, the private property rights the owners of these places used to have to determine what legal activities they will allow in their establishments and ignore their loss of business to bars, restaurants and casinos just across respective state lines. You cannot ignore the fact that the rights that Veterans of Foreign Wars fought for, were wounded trying to defend, and even saw their buddies die for, are being stripped away from them.

Peaceniks, anti-war activists and Democrats in general love to say they support the troops. And then they come and take away their freedom to determine what sort of atmosphere they will have in their own hallowed VFW halls. What a slap in the face for all they have sacrificed.

Myself, I quit smoking years ago. I prefer bars and restaurants that are not obnoxiously smoky. But that’s a personal decision, just as it should be for those who still smoke and prefer a smoky atmosphere.

My own state senator, Dr. David Hartsuch – a Republican – voted for this odious bill. He explained that as a doctor he knows the health risks of smoking. And, apparently he feels it is his duty to impose his special understanding onto everyone else. Well, I’m sorry, Doc, but that’s not your call. These VFW guys, if not the rest of us, have earned the right to make their own decisions. Leave them alone.

And then quit making all the decisions for the rest of us too.

As regular readers have probably figured out, here at the T'n'T, we are anthropomorphic global warming climate change skeptics. And we rail against environmental activists who use a single weather event to push the global warming mantra.

And yet, I just can't help but engage in a little schadenfreudewhen I see stories with headlines like: Temperature Monitors Report Widespread Global Cooling.

What is depressing, however, is that even if it stays cooler for the next decade, the same people who've been running around since 1985 shouting "we must act now to stop global warming" will convert over to shouting "we must act now to stop global cooling" with nary a hint of irony or admission of contradiction. They'll roll right on shoveling the notion that mankind in general, and the free-market specifically, are the cause of the peril we face. And their handmaidens in the media will trumpet that only the collectivism of the left can possibly save us.

Bah!

Is This Why Your Flight is Delayed?

Here's an interesting blog column from the Atlantic Magazine written by an airline traffic controller out east. In it, the author argues, fairly persuasively, that the big problem isn't an antiquated air traffic control system, but rather there simply isn't enough time in the day to get big planes in an out of busy airports. This is due to the fact that the fact of moving a plane at high speed either during takeoff or landing disturbs the air to such a degree that the planes must be spaced out by at least one minute. And it's longer for the jumbo jets. So the max number of planes that can be moved in an hour is capped at no more than 60 per runway.

Like I said, it's interesting and not something I've heard discussed before.

However, I must take issue with what appears to be his solution....increasing regulation of the industry in general, and having Congress assert control of the number of takeoff and landing spots at busy airports. I've discussed before how regulations still hamstring the airlines in the de-regulated world.

There are actually better solutions. In no particular order, they include:

1. Building more runways.
2. Have the busy airports charge differing takeoff or landing charges to the airlines based upon the time of day.
3. Move towards more direct flights that are smaller planes moving from smaller airports.

If, at its base, the problem is too few runways, then build more runways. That's a pretty simple solution. It's not without difficulties. Airports that are near other developments may have NIMBY problems. Others are simply unable to expand due to physical features of the landscape. But in most locations, I'm sure there is some way to get some additional runways built.

Airports should charge more for landing times in the peak period. Spread your flights out through the day. If everyone wants to come in between 4:00 PM and 6:00 PM, then double or triple the charge at that time. Or give discounted rates to come in between 10:00 PM and 1:00 AM. It's pretty much a twenty-four hour world out there now. If people will shop at Wal-Mart at 3:00 AM to save 2 cents on their light bulbs, the'll be willing to pay $50.00 less per ticket to fly at 10:00 PM.

The biggest problems appear to be at airports that handle big planes flying from hub to hub. The small planes funnel us small-towners into the hub, then we take another plane from hub to hub. If we flew more small planes directly from our small starting point to our ending point, then there wouldn't be so many jumbo jets that need extra time for takeoffs and landings at the hub. Sure, this will cost a little extra, but people will pay for convenience.