Obamacare strikes home

Humana  says they will cancel my Medicare Advantage health insurance policy, effective in December.  Wonderful.

How the Republicans lost in 2012

There are a lot of reasons, but number one reason is women voted for Obama 55% to 45%.  That's a ten percent edge, a land slide.  And women are one half the electorate.   Let's not get sidetracked onto Hispanics or blacks or gays.  None of those groups, worthy as they may be, are 50 % of the votes.  Let's concentrate on the main issue.
   I have not seen any polling since the election that tells why women voted so heavily Obama and Democrat.  If the Republicans hope to go anywhere, they have to find out why, especially after suffering thru Great Depression 2.0 for all of Obama's first term, women voted overwhelmingly for Obama in 2012.

   Is it just Obama, a slender sexy guy who dresses well, has good name recognition, and has a good speaking voice? 
   Is it the desire for free contraceptives and federally funded abortion?
   Is it a desire for more food stamps, more health care, more daycare, more welfare, more free stuff?
   Is it (was it) Romney?  Was Romney too much a married family man, to obviously religious, and ineffectual on the campaign trail?
   Is it a feeling that Democrats are better equal opportunity employers than Republicans?
   Is it a distaste for Republican defense spending?
   Do women care that men have been losing their jobs ever since Obama took office?
   Does the Republican stance on abortion drive women away?
   Are women actually in favor of legalizing pot?  And repelled by Republican support for the war on drugs?
   Are there other issues important to women?

Unless the Republicans get back in the good graces of women, they face a grim future.

EOF (end of fall) (Time to put the Weber away)

Gotta do it , lessen I want to leave the poor thing out in the snow on the deck all winter.   Some how I have TWO grills for it and both of them thick with grease/soot/crud.  Thankfully I live alone, so I can use the big kitchen sink to clean 'em.  No woman would allow that.  So, between the grill scraper thingie and a lot of brillo, they are now sorta clean.  Clean as I am gonna get 'em.  Pulled the Weber out into the driveway, dumped the unburned charcoal and ash into the woods, and hosed it down.  I'll let it dry, give it a shot of WD-40 to discourage the rust, and stash it in the garage.
   Then I will have an end of fall drink.  EOF?  That actually is a C programming name that means End of File.  I haven't done anything in C for some years, so now it is End of Fall  

Such a deal

The few people who have gotten thru to the Obamacare websites are reporting policies costing several hundred dollars a month, with deductibles of $4000 and up.   Such a deal.  If you are in good health, which most of us are, you won't rack up $4000 in doctor's bills inside a year.  So what are you buying insurance against?  You still have to pay out of pocket for everything under $4000. 
   Support you get unlucky and actually need an operation?  Those go for $20,000.  So you pay $4000 and the insurance pays off the rest.  Big deal.  How many of us have $4000 just lying around?  Damn few. 
   Most young single guys won't fall for deal like that. 

NHPR covers the "app" industry in NH

"App" as in "applicaton".  We used to call 'em programs,  now they are "apps".  NHPR did a 3 or four part series on the app business.  A fair number of small companies that write apps have sprung up in New Hampshire.  They are apparently doing well.  As an old software guy, I listened to the whole thing, just to see what going down.  NHPR  skipped over the business model, like who buys apps (as opposed to downloading free ones), owner ship of the completed app, startup money.  Also no talk about software development tools, compilers, loaders, libraries, like can you just buy them, or do you have to sign non disclosure agreements to keep every thing in the smart phone secret from hackers?
  Last installment talked about education, a computer science degree from UNH is pretty much mandatory to get into the app writing business.  Then NHPR revealed the great challenge to the educators, namely getting more girls to major in computer science.  It's just terrible, the computer science major is only 10% female.  Must be someone's fault.  NHPR put more passion into the gender equality bit than anything else in the series.
   Couldn't have anything to do with the fact that boys are deeper in love with computer games than girls.  A major leading to a career in computer games is just naturally going to be more attractive to boys than to girls.   

Is Obama dumb enough to default?

First let's define terms.  Default means failure to pay interest upon the national debt.  Which is treasury bills. T-bills for short.  Default does not mean failure to pay social security, pay the bureaucrats, pay the troops, make home loans, open the national parks, pay medicare, or do all the other things the Federal government does.  It just means failure to pay off the T-bills, or pay interest on the T-bills. 
   Right now American T-bills are the safest investment on the planet.  America has always paid off on bonds, and this goes way back, like back to the Revolution.  T-bills are issued by the strongest government on the planet, backed by the strongest economy on the planet, protected by the strongest armed forces on the planet.  As a result, we can raise money anytime we please by printing up some more T-bills and selling them.  People give us real cash money and we give them paper T-bills.  And we don't even promise them very much interest.  This is VERY useful to us.  It's a national credit rating of 1000, the best you can get. 
   Default, will screw this up for ever.  Default means we stop paying interest on T-bills and refuse to redeem them for cash when they mature.  Do this just once, and  the trust is broken.  We will have to pay much higher interest rates to borrow, and we face the prospect of not being able to sell T-bills when we need to. 
   Any man of even marginal intelligence would know that we ought to pay off on the national debt BEFORE we pay anything else. 
   Is Obama a man of even marginal intelligence?  To hear him talk, no.  He has been threatening default for weeks.  What if he carries thru on his threats? 
   Judging by the way he has made the "shutdown" as painful as possible, he is a man who enjoys inflicting pain on his citizenry.   Is he dumb enough to default just to inflict more pain on his citizens? 

  

Warthog Fan Club

The Warthog, more formally the A10, is a close support aircraft.  It isn't a supersonic fighter, it's a jet version of the Stuka.  Which is why ground troops love it and the Air Force wants to retire it.  With a 30 millimeter (inch and a quarter) Gatling gun it is tank buster supreme.  What the rotary cannon cannot deal with, bombs and rockets slung under the wings can.  But, with a top speed of less than 500 mph, it's dead meat against enemy fighters.  The Air Force, run by fighter pilots,  wants to fly air to air against enemy fighters.  You don't make ace no matter how many tanks you bust.
   Any how, there is now a Save-the-A10 Facebook page with 2722 likes, and any number of after dinner speakers supporting the old Warthog.