National Health Care - The Real Reason

I love a good conspiracy as much as the next guy, especially one in which people who ought to know better are sucked in, to the vast amusement of everybody else. Here, however is the root of a real goodie:

"A majority of young people still approve of Obama's job performance, but a majority of seniors over 64 now don't (54%). Maybe they'll die before the next election."--Andrew Malcolm, Los Angeles Times Web site, July 8

Maybe that's the reason for rushing national health care through. The resultant rationing will reduce the ranks of the opposition.

We Need an Assault Cat Ban !

Uncle, unsuspecting, takes in a cute critter.

Said critter attempts to kill Uncle.

Uncle, being a properly manly man, avails himself of privatized health care and overcomes the assault, for which we are all grateful. I, for one, plan to celebrate with a steak and a beer.

Happy Independence Day

The report is in from testing done at an undisclosed location, that the Dahlgren replica cannon, described a couple of posts down, makes a satisfactory report with 90 gr of fffg under a 3/4" plug of Ethafoam.

Folks, it's Independence Day. If you don't do something to declare at least some independence from oppressive government, Federal, State, or local, you're not doing it right.
The religion of Orthodox Viking assures us that everything is OK as long as it's done to excess. If a little is good, and more is better, than too much is about right. Before taking on the challenge of lofting a BBQ grill over the house, please do the preliminary math first, and add 20% margin to all calculations to compensate for inferior fireworks made by non-union labor in an Asian sweat shop.

Fun is like explosives: More is always better.

The Future of Transportation

In this iteration, someone, presumably from France, has figured out how to get a (mostly) enclosed motor scooter to run on railroad tracks. From Moonbattery:

Generally there is a 5 miles free space between two trains on a regular railway track. This free space and time can be utilized by these commuter cars to get people going on to their destinations. Essentially just hop into Paracité and drive up to the station and skip the train and wait for your turn; use the tracks till your destination and then drive off in it for the remainder of the journey.

There is 5 miles between regular freight trains because that's about what they need to get stopped. If there were 15 of these things on the tracks between two coal trains, guess which one would run out of gas? Now imagine what one of those spiffy black and orange BNSF

locomotives would look like with 15 of these things on the leading edge like big fiberglass bugs on the cowcatcher.

In some parts of the country, some folks have modified bicycles to run on (hopefully) abandoned railroad tracks, which gives you a nice tour of scenic back country un-bothered by traffic, except at grade crossings. The bikes run on bare rims, and have a third outrigger wheel, similar to the gizmo shown above to keep them aligned on the tracks. The railroads may no longer use the tracks, but they take a very dim view of this usage.

Solution Finds Problem

It's nice to be able to talk about something besides the idiots in Washington for a change.

A friend of mine whom I hadn't seen in a while dropped by and told me that he has a job on the municipal limousine service known as Access-a-Ride. This involves picking up and dropping off people confined to wheelchairs and walkers.

It appears that some of the well-retired folks who have limited mobility have discovered that if you can walk a little, a Segway is an improvement over a powered chair for getting around. The problem this creates is that the mini-buses the city uses for the handicapped are not equipped to tie down a Segway on board, as they can with a wheelchair.

A study has been done, and guidelines are about to be issued on how to do this. Myself, I favor a minimalist approach: Simply add a belt or two to a vertical post, have the Segway riders back up to the post, and fasten the belt around both the rider and the machine, much in the manner of preparing a heritic for burning at the stake. Saves adding a seat, and takes up less space. Voila, problem solved.

Cap and Tax

The C&T bill that was recently whooped through the house contains, it seems, what is called in Washington, a placeholder. This is an interesting legal doohicky that allows a bill to be passed with things like TBD installed in it that can be re-written or interpreted later out of sight of the unwashed masses. In the C&T bill, it looks like this, thanks to Michelle Malkin:
Section Reserved is to be filled in later when someone thinks of something that might need to go there. More interesting is that the section that will be installed later is in the allocation of allowances, or for you unwashed masses, the spreading of the wealth around, presumably to the richly deserving.
When you go to section 788, there is no text except the words [section reserved], so the minute details of who exactly would be deserving of allocations is still TBD. Maybe Obamas fine print czar will take care of this, but I would suggest, to my Senator, that some stimulus action be applied here, to wit:
Sec 788. Allocations for Patriotic and Underemployed Bloggers. Setting up a committee to be made up of Billll, Tamera K. and Jeff Soyer, being all patriotic and either unemployed or underemployed, who will allocate CO2 emissions credits as they see fit in such a way as to reduce the discomfiture level of the country and reward patriotic and inspirational blogging. For this service, the committee shall each be given 25,000 tons of CO2 credits to dispose of as they see fit. The committee shall be allocated 25 million tons of CO2 credits to be distributed as they see fit, a report as to the distribution to be submitted to the minister of minutiae at the end of the fiscal year.

Current thinking is that depending on how the economy moves, a ton of CO2 credit would be worth somewhere between 0 and $40. In Europe, the C&T system was installed, and the economy tanked, causing fuel and power usage to drop driving the price of a CO2 credit from 15 euros to about .15 euros. Industries who bought early took a beating, but hey, I might get lucky.

The word in DC is that as soon as a copy of the bill can be printed up, it's going directly to the Senate shredder, so the actual value of a CO2 credit will likely be zero, same as a unicorn fart.

Taxes and Employment II

OK here some explanation, and a new question raised. Gateway Pundit has a report on the unemployment numbers showing the unemployment rate at 9.5%. Oddly, the 470,000 jobs lost in June only added .1% to the unemployment rate, but in the previous month, when the economy shed 520,000 jobs, the rate jumped .4%. It seems a 10% reduction in job losses results in a 75% reduction in the effect.

Regarding my simplistic method of calculating the unemployment rate in the previous post, Gateway notes:

...If laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included, the unemployment rate would have been 16.5 percent in June, the highest on records dating to 1994.

Still not quite apples to apples, but closer than published government numbers which become more suspect almost daily.

Taxes and Employment

Newsbusters reports that government revenue for June '09 is down 9.8% from June '08. Now I'm sure the relationship between employment and revenue is vastly more complicated than I am perceiving it but, to take a simple-minded peasants view:

Revenue is equal to the number of peasants toiling times the average tax rate imposed on their earnings.

R = E*t

Let Revenue in June '08 (R1) = 100
In June of '08, unemployment was 5.5% so the employment rate was 94.5%
100 = 94.5 * t so the effective tax rate would be 1.0582

Note that the total revenue and the total population don't actually matter since we're only comparing percentages here.

If Revenue in June of '09 (R2) = 90.2, and the tax rate is unchanged, then the percentage employed becomes 90.2/1.0582 = 85.239, which implies a 14.8% unemployment rate.

I know that other factors affect these numbers. At the last place I worked, the main workforce took a 20% pay cut in lieu of layoffs, and I stand by my previous prediction that the rate for June will be 9.8%, but how would that square with the announced revenue drop?

Innovation

The phrase "jury rig" or jerry built, or jerry rig has several possible origins, the one I'm most familiar with derives from the waning days of WWII when the Germans, or "Jerries" had to improvise a lot of their equipment, and afterword, their whole economy.

Here's a site where improvised solutions, for better or worse, are celebrated. Duct tape, hose clamps, and what-have-you are quite popular.
Of course if this guy could learn to drink more pedestrian scotch, maybe he could afford a proper overflow tank for his radiator. OTOH, you have to keep your priorities straight. To ruin a good quote: Good Scotch will get you through times of leaky radiators better than a leaky radiator will get you through times of no Scotch.

Honduras Coup

Maybe a coup, maybe more like a summary impeachment. The WSJs O'Grady writes:

Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo [Chavez] himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya's abuses, also wants him back in power. It will be a miracle if Honduran patriots can hold their ground.

That Mr. Zelaya acted as if he were above the law, there is no doubt. While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.

But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela.

Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, Fidel Castro, and Hillary Clinton. Now there is a set of names you would only normally want to see together as the guest of honor list for a mass hanging.

It's good to make clear that when it comes down to a choice between constitutional democracies and tinpot dictators, which side the Obama administration comes down on.

Update: Obama says the coup was illegal. The Honduran Supreme court, however, does not concur:

The Honduran Congress named an interim president, Roberto Micheletti, and the country's Supreme Court said it had ordered the army to remove Zelaya.

Interesting position he's taking on the topic of a president illegally attempting to extend his otherwise constitutionally limited term. Chavez is threatening military action. I wonder how that will play in D.C.?

Fireworks

The traditional forms of celebration of the founding of a country of free men having been largely forbidden by the government, it is left to us to figure out how to accomplish this with the available resources.
This is a model of a Dahlgren-style black powder cannon of the sort one might find in the late 1800s. This particular item has a bore of 3/4" which opens up several possibilities for loadings.
This is fired with a fuse, which allows for retreat to a safe distance when firing. The originals were fired with a quick match, which was similar in function, but faster. That much detail was more than I wanted to get in to.

The wedge under the barrel is the usual procedure for elevating the barrel. Presumably the operators would have worked out the ranges at different elevations, and marked them on the base plate under the wedge.

For general noise making, about 30g of 2 or 3f black powder under a wad made of 3/4" Ethafoam will certainly do the job, and with a minimal recoil. The bore being what it is, shot cups from a 12 ga will fit smoothly down the barrel, and at an extreme, a 1 oz 12 ga shotgun slug could be loaded in to it.

The gun weighs 13 lbs which is heavy for a 12 ga deer gun, but think about the expected recoil. I would not fire this with a heavy projectile without coming up with a way to anchor the gun to whatever platform it was shooting from, preferrably with some elasticity involved to avoid sudden impact. Cannon from this era were normally loaded with powder never greater than 10% of the projectile weight. For something untried, I would start at 5% or less, which works out to about 20 grains. Note also that the cannon wall thickness is approximately equal to the bore of the gun. This is a good starting point.

It's not really done yet. Before shooting any heavy loads, I intend to cut the top of the carriage, and add Iron straps to hold down the barrel, this should result in greater historical accuracy, and a much diminished likelihood of the wood splitting and the barrel flying back into someones vehicle. The wood is Maple. Use only hardwood.

WARNING! CAUTION! DISCLAIMER!

This gun was machined from a solid billet of good grade steel. Putting powder into a piece of pipe, no matter how good it looks, is a bad idea. Before you rush out and build a historically accurate replica of the guns used at Ft. Sumner, only to find you have built a historically accurate pipe bomb, consult with an engineer with some experience at calculating the required size and strength of large hydraulic cylinders.
If you don't know what the math is, or can't do it yourself, I would strongly suggest not doing this at all, or at least farm it out to someone who does, like Dixie Gun Works.

Happy 4th of July.

N. Korean Rocket

The Norks are planning to launch a Taepodong-2 rocket toward Hawaii on the 4th of July, this being the Norks symbolic version of the legendary Hawaiian good luck sign, normally consisting of an upraised middle finger. The normally expected range of the missile is 4000 miles, but recent tests suggest that 200 may be more like it. OTOH, they have recently made good progress with their nukes getting the output from 5 lb to 15 Kt in one step.

In response, President Obama sent out a diplomatic communique stating:

"Dear sawed-off poofter:

It is our firmly held belief that your jumped-up skyrocket couldn't hit the birth records center in Hilo if your winning the next election to dogcatcher over there depended on it. I have prepared 3 tankers of Alaskan crude, and a case of top-drawer Tennesee whiskey that says you can't.
Come on, show us what you got.

Respectfully yours
B.H.Obama
President of the United States"

If the rumors of the US sending an anti-missile cruiser to the Sea of Japan are true, you might want to pick the smaller numbers in the missile-range pool.

SAT Question

Found the link at Insty, passing it along to you here:

Smoot-Hawley is to Waxman-Markey as ...

I need a new label for this sort of thing. I think I'll call it "Black Humor".

Other peoples suggestions are in the comments, and some of them are great.

The Battle of First St. Albans is to the Battle of Bosworth.

Obviously.

And some, like the above, go clean over my head.

Chicago Rules

Back along about the time that Rep Conyers' wife was being investigated for taking bribes, Mr. Conyers announced that the House Judiciary Committee, of which he was chairman, would be investigating voter irregularities involving ACORN.

His wife, a Detroit city councilwoman, just pled guilty to the charges. Now Mr. Conyers says he's dropping the ACORN investigation. I'm thinking that the threat of investigating ACORN didn't work to quash the investigation of his wife, but perhaps some kind of plea-bargain may have been reached in which dropping the investigation of ACORN will be traded for a slap on the wrist for his wife, who would otherwise be looking at 5 years in the joint.

The whole country is now Chicago. Get used to it.

Unemployment

There are many ways of calculating the unemployment rate, and different methods are used by different entities, Federal or State. Here is a document that defines the six different unemployment rates the Feds are currently promulgating.

   NOTE:  Marginally attached workers are persons who
currently are neither working nor looking for work but
indicate that they want and are available for a job
and have looked for work sometime in the recent past.
 Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally
attached,have given a job-market related reason for not
looking currently for a job.  Persons employed part time
for economic reasons are those who want and are available
for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-
time schedule.For more information, see "BLS introduces
new range of alternative unemployment measures," in the
October 1995 issue of the Monthly Labor Review.  Updated
population controls are introduced annually with the
release of January data.

The U-3 rate is the official unemployment rate, and is based on a phone survey of people all across the country.

  U-5 Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus                                                                                  
     all other marginally attached workers, as a                                                                                      
     percent of the civilian labor force plus all                                                                                     
     marginally attached workers.................10.6%

This is probably a more accurate measure of the current unemployment rate.