Health Care

The health care bill, all 1900 pages of it, passed the house today in what was undoubtedly a carefully choreographed vote. Job one in politics is getting yourself re-elected, so the opposing dems undoubtedly all came from otherwise Red districts (cough) Markey (cough).

A triumphant Speaker Nancy Pelosi likened the legislation to the passage of Social Security in 1935 and Medicare 30 years later.

Both of which stand today as paragons of careful financial management and long term planning.

We're From The Government

And we're here to help.

Saw an article somewhere, and now can't find the thing again, that notes that the federal lead law that effectively bans garage sales and home made crafts without a lead test, extends to metallic alloys that contain lead, pretty much without regard to the amount.

This will extend the ban to include certain alloys of brass and steel. Yes, steel, to which, in some cases, small quantities of lead are added to make it easier to machine. So if you have children in your home, and inspection reveals brass plumbing fixtures, doorknobs, or house keys, run for your life, you're all gonna die!

Hunting The Wiley Wild Bowling Pin

Shot a bowling pin match today. Finished about halfway down, which sounds unexciting until you remember that not that long ago I was finishing dead last. Folks, try not to injure your head, recovery takes forever.

Pin matches are a contrast between the auto loaders and the revolvers. With an auto, speed is king. 5 rounds to knock over 5 pins, then 10 rounds or more to get them off the table. With a revolver, you bring the biggest one you've got, preferably with the number 4 in the size, or the word "magnum" in the name. Both, if you can manage.

Take your time, remembering that there's only 5 pins, and you have a spare bullet if you need it. No matter how hard you try, you can't miss fast enough to win.

I had two 5-round tables today, that's 5 rounds, and 5 pins on the ground. Yay me!

Ft. Hood

People are criticizing Obama for his apparent lack of concern about the Ft. Hood shooting. Give the man some slack. People get killed at that rate back in Chicago all the time.

The Elections

The topic has been written to death, in most cases, but it's never too late to have some fun with it.

Chris Christie won in New Jersey because all the "spare" ballots that are usually "found" in the trunks of cars, were stored in cars that were inadvertently sold under the "Cash for Clunkers" program.

You can bet the party hack responsible for "finding" those extra ballots is in the trunk of his own car right now heading for the crusher.

Ft. Hood

Ross Kaminsky has a post on the topic over at Rossputin on the topic. What struck me is that the shootewr was a doctor of psychaietry, which suggest no more than a $0.50 taxi ride to the booby hatch anyway. He also is taking a survey which should bring in some interesting commentary.

1. Of course. I notice that when I hear about a mass murder or bomb plot, it's almost never a Methodist. I also understand that the Koran and the Hadith place a religious obligation on their followers to perform such acts.
1a. Thursdays acts merely confirm my observations.

2. Devout followers of any religion have a tendency to think of Gods law as being superior to any secular law. History is full of examples. When religious law comes into conflict with secular law regarding killing people or paying taxes, the outcome is generally not happy.

3. Legally surveilling Muslims would be extremely difficult at best, from a legal standpoint. Should we? Interesting question. Everyone has the right to practice the religion of their choice, however some restrictions apply. Satanists are prohibited from practicing human sacrifice, for example. Don't know if the prohibition extends to advocating it, but if so then such a prohibition should logically extend to the advocacy of murder against practitioners of other religions.
Can an ordinary citizen be sanctioned for advocating violence against other citizens, for whatever reason? (Big discussion of this, re: "Fighting words" at Volokh)
Can a "holy man" be sanctioned for advocating violence against practitioners of other religions? Can a religion be sanctioned for including the same in its basic dogma?
If Boulder passes a strong "hate speech" law, can I demand that Islam be banned in Boulder under it?

I've commented on Islam before here at casa Billll, and called it like I saw it, which will probably keep me from getting elected to high public office, at least as a Democrat, or in Boulder county, should that ever happen.

Harrys Roamers Turkey Run

I'll promote this because I've always had fun on this. It's a chance to get on your motorcycle and enjoy the kind of weather we've come to expect in Colorado in mid-November.
Balmy weather. Note the chaps on the luggage rack.
I've ridden this event is everything from shirt-sleeve warmth to snow with ice on the pavement, which was, shall we say, challenging.
Note the bike-fu masters technique; Foot well to the rear, forks at full lock, bike leaning strongly to the near side. In his defense, we were pulling onto the roadway here at a twisty section that made seeing oncoming traffic from either direction difficult. The traffic tended to take the posted limit as only an advisory, too. We bikers, of course, were paragons of virtue at all times.

The event is November 15th, regardless of weather, starting at G.I. Jodys watering hole on the NE corner of Ken Caryl and Simms. Doors open at 9:30, registration starts at 10, first bike out at 11, everybody in by 3 PM.

Cost is $10/rider, $5/ passenger, or extra hand.

High-quality frozen turkeys are the prizes. This is a poker run format ride. If you don't know what a poker run is, come on out and find out. As W.C.Fields said, "This is not a game of chance. Not the way I play it, no."

09 Elections

All in all, not bad. Not as good as it could have been, Bloomberg joins Danny Ortega in getting term limits swept aside, and NY-23 didn't work out in spite of polls showing Hoffman leading easily right up to the end.

Considering that both the GOP and the Dems (but I repeat myself) were running against him up until 1 week before the election, I'd say Hoffman did quite well.

Of course we must remember that in politics, 2nd place is equivalent to a train ticket to Siberia.

Swine Flu Plot

I love a good conspiracy. Here at Right Wing News is a report in the comments that the Swine Flue vaccine, to be given to the detainees at Gitmo, is made from ..... Swine.

OK, it has now been reported in a usually* reliable source that the swine flu vaccine is made from pigs. If this post is referenced in another blog** then one could say that it has been widely reported that...

Rioting begins in 3,...2,...1,...

*I admit the original post is probably more reliable than the comments.

**This one, for example. Given the size of the internet, it doesn't take much to make a report "wide".

Quote of the Week

From Megan Mcardle at the Atlantic, in the comments:

"If Obama’s skin was any thinner, he’d have a reservoir tip on the top of his head."

I always thought of him as a bit of a bubblehead.

2012

It's way early to be naming candidates, but never too early to demonstrate why conservatives are generally happier than liberals. BigFurHat, over at I Own The World suggests this pair:

No, not the lottery. The 2012 presidential election. It’s Michelle Bachmann and the conservative celebrity Janine Turner. I have the campaign all laid out. It will be called Bachmann/Turner Overdrive. And the campaign song is Takin’ Care Of Business. Boom. Instant win.

We could do worse, and if we're not careful, we probably will. Frankly this rather fanciful ticket sounds better than one headed up by either Huckabee or Romney.

Pumpkin Season

Since 2 people have tipped me to this, I guess I need to weigh in on it. Seems the Cal State U at Fullerton, which is down in Orange county, held a punkin chunkin contest for the engineering students, and one team built an air cannon.
Impressive machine for something built in a hurry with a grade at stake.
The contest was held on the football field at about the 30 yard line, with targets set up somewhere near the goal line.

When we built our first air cannon, the barrel was 40 ft long. You do the math on these things, and the preliminary results are so fantastic you tend not to believe them. The math said that at 100 psi, the pumpkin would travel about 3 miles. Since that requires supersonic muzzle velocities, and that wasn't possible with an air gun, we wrote that off completely. The compressor we had available initially was capable of only putting 18 psi into the tanks, so our first shot was (empirically) predicted to just fall lamely out of the barrel. Instead it went about a block, fortunately hitting nothing breakable.

For our second effort, we arranged for 800 feet to the fence, and another 200 or so visible beyond it. I'm pretty sure we made 2200 feet that day, again, hitting nothing breakable. After that all our testing was done out at the gun range where we had over a mile.

Looking downrange at Fullerton:
You can see the "castles" used as targets on the right. Note the scoreboard, way back there. Now visit the link, and click up picture #4, a close-up of the scoreboard.

Air cannons are a lot of fun. I'll sell you mine for $1500 and you can terrorize your neighborhood for a half-mile radius.

Thanks to Jed and AKA Angrywhiteman for the tips on this one.

Sausage and Legislation

In the past, it was relatively easy for a legislator to slip an amendment into an otherwise unrelated bill to the benefit of his constituents or himself, and have the bit slip through unnoticed. All you had to do was apportion the available legislation among the legislators so that a declaration of support for the state trash haulers didn't contain $40Bn worth of pork divided among the legislators in amounts varying by seniority.

The internet has provided the taxpayers with (dare I say) an Army of Davids in their defense. While it is certain that a very large bill might well be whooped through before anyone, or even any 10 people could plausibly read it, it is increasingly unlikely that even a 1990 pg bill can be voted on before 1000 people read 2 pages each, and report the most egregious flaws.

You gotta love it when only 2 days after the thing is dropped on selected desks, Limbaugh is reading a long list of items sure to annoy the intended victims of the thing. You knew the lawyers wouldn't get left out, and sure enough, Brietbart discovers this from page 1431-1433 of the bill:

Section 2531, entitled “Medical Liability Alternatives,” establishes an incentive program for states to adopt and implement alternatives to medical liability litigation. [But]…… a state is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on the books that limits attorneys’ fees or imposes caps on damages.

A politician is one who never sees a constituent problem that cannot be turned into a revenue source without actually fixing the problem.

Happy Halloween

There's a problem with the festivities in Clinton, N.J. with a haunted house called Asylum of Terror.

CLINTON -- Every fall, the Red Mill Museum here hosts a haunted house. But this year’s "Asylum of Terror," has angered mental health advocates who said the theme perpetuates ugly stereotypes.

Evidently the thought of an institution full of lunatics that lacks the marble columns out front and the big gold dome on the roof, drives advocates for the deranged, crazy.

DARPA Challenge

While humming the tune to "99 Red Ballons", find 10 of them in the shortest time.

To mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet, DARPA has announced the DARPA Network Challenge, a competition that will explore the role the Internet and social networking plays in the timely communication, wide area team-building and urgent mobilization required to solve broad scope, time-critical problems.

The challenge is to be the first to submit the locations of ten moored, 8 foot, red weather balloons located at ten fixed locations in the continental United States. Balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roadways.

An interesting challenge, especially if you think a bit about what this will prove to DARPA. What we have here is an experiment to see if 20,000,000 geeks can find something faster than 2,000 intelligence analysts in windowless rooms with access to spy satellites. If you're interested, there's a picture of a sample balloon at the link above. I imagine that one found floating over a car dealership, apartment complex, or furniture store will probably not be the balloon you are looking for, although this suggests a great exercise in deception.

What makes this interesting to me is an effort I made a couple weeks ago to find an Iranian Nuke site located "SE of Qom, Iran". Using Google Earth, I found a suspicious looking site rather quickly, and when someone published a released picture shortly thereafter, sure enough, that was it. New construction shows up on satellite photos like a fly on a plate, and "new" means anything less than 1 or 2 years old, especially if no landscaping effort has gone along with it.